Cloud Lines | Chris Jones

When snow mobs us half way up Hen Cloud
so that rufous bracken flowers white
and feet I land in are the feet you leave
as if to make a tightrope of ourselves,

I slow to take in Blackshaw Moor, effaced
but for a peregrine’s wing,
tracks of hares and rabbits,
the last spoor of a wallaby left in snow.

Hen Cloud, along with The Roaches (from the French les roches – the rocks) and Ramshaw Rocks forms a prominent gritstone escarpment situated above Leek and Tittesworth Reservoir. This ridge, with its spectacular rock formations, rises steeply to 505m. In the 1930s five Australian Bennett’s wallabies were released into the wild from a private collection. A small colony is believed to continue to live there.

Click here to listen to Chris Jones reading ‘Cloud Lines’.