Farther

I don’t know if the day after Boxing Day has a name
but it was then we climbed the Skirrid again,
choosing the long way round,
through the wood, simplified by snow,
along the dry stone wall, its puzzle solved by moss,
and out of the trees into that cleft of earth
split they say by a father’s grief
at the loss of his son to man.
We stopped there at an altar of rock and rested,
watching the dog shrink over the hill before continuing ourselves,
finding the slope steeper than expected.
A blade of wind from the east
and the broken stone giving under our feet
with the sound of a crowd sighing.
Half way up and I turned to look at you,
your bent head the colour of the rocks,
your breath reaching me, short and sharp and solitary,
and again I felt the tipping in the scales of us,
the intersection of our ages.
The dog returns having caught nothing but his own tongue
and you are with me again, so together we climbed to the top
and shared the shock of a country unrolled before us,
the hedged fields breaking on the edge of Wales.
Pulling a camera from my pocket I placed it on the trig point
and leant my cheek against the stone to find you in its frame,
before joining you and waiting for the shutter’s blink
that would tell me I had caught this:
the sky rubbed raw over the mountains,
us standing on the edge of the world, together against the view
and me reaching for some kind of purchase
or at least a shallow handhold in the thought
that with every step apart, I’m another step closer to you.