The first poem here, ‘Greenmoor’, was published in The North, issue 50, and was a prizewinner in the ‘Sheffield Category’ of the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition, 2012, judged by Simon Armitage.
Greenmoor
Across the eyebrow of the horizon
cut stones are scattered
under a body of winter burnt heather.
Worked with hammer and chisel
sound is spread on the wind.
Dust catches his eye, tears run.
Rough hands rub, rough words
splutter out covered with spit.
Bones ache, limbs take the strain.
A god sky: February sun
touches the earth. Sky lark warns rats
a lurcher is doing his own digging.
***
Snailsden
Bare bones of stone at road end,
whitened teeth in a sepulchre.
There had been rain. Grouse gurgled
hidden by bleached grass,
flattened by wind.
Quarrymen wet wedges,
cleave stone from moor land.
Boots slap in water.
Voices shout over silence,
dig peat in the Graveship of Holme.
Wheels squeal and stick as carts
take the weight through weather.
Julie Mellor - poet 