The View From Up Here
Freer than sound, freer than light, freer than ghosts
deep in the brown hills, the rain a silver threat strung on the wind
‘Gone hiking,’ I say, but I’m really just gone.
It’s the privilege of the sheep
and the wind-tussled pines to see
the world like this, like a child rummaging a rock-pool, the stirring streets
fade into ragged fields, into rumpled hills, into faded sky
turned once too often in the spring storm’s washing-machine.
I was sold a dream, and a train ticket, and a view of houses;
Just you wait, and we will sell you the sky, if you want it hard enough
if you want to see things that the people who live in those houses
don’t see. But
the promise was so fragile, it was shattered in a week.
Some things are bigger than these hills, but don’t have half the bedrock;
the staying power to withstand ice ages and industrialisation and still
see the sun. I want to change
not to end. The sky is untouchable but
up here I am half a mile closer.
Daisy Harris
Daisy Harris Poetry 