Yorkshire

A poem By: 
Theme: Places
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For Robert and Claire Beaumont

By artist Lois Joy Thurstun, inspired by this poem

Hefted.
My interior compass
navigating, turning,
returning to a familiar landscape.

Tracing
an invisible line.
Drawing
a golden thread.

Hefted.
Held safe beside dry stone walls.
My first foot falls
in the places which hold me still.

Places
to which
I will always belong.

People
I will always
understand.

A common parlance.
A shared history,
strong as a well bound book.

Events
that shaped then
who I have now become.

The magnetic pull
of the compass
like a ley-line

tracing itself
through and beyond
my knowing body.
Hefted.

Comments from the author Georgina Noakes

Hefted: a term for sheep that inhabit the unfenced Cumbrian fells of Howgill. They appear to have an inbred knowledge of a particular landscape, a homing instinct that seems to give them a mental map of their own territory, to which they will intuitively return.

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