Poem Of The Week: Thirlmere By Rhiannon Hooson

Thirlmere

After we lit the last candle
the gales couldn't hold us any more.
Along the lanes the walls had begun
to slump, water sluicing through them
green as grass, but we drove
through anyway and out into the valley.

The fields were polished flat.
Trees were hung with drooping ropes
of fleece that caught the breeze like kudzu.
Banks of shale sprawled
draining across the roads, and the sky
was open, dizzying and blue, tall into the air
above the crowns of our heads,

and the slate face of the lake
was the same as always. Lakes survive
any flood, lie oblique in their hollows,
streaked with the half-truths of glimpsed reflections.
The birds were only then beginning to sound.
All across the fields the trees were burning.