High, high, looming out of the green plain
Rise the Malvern hills.
Their jagged skyline snags you, you’re hooked.
Blue in the morning, green in the afternoon, black at night,
Cloaked and hooded by mist
In strange wizardry.
I climbed to the top,
Along a salt ridge of black rock
Beaten by the fury of the wind.
The hills bend their back against the cold, yawning to the east.
Winter had bruised the bracken
And feet the path, as I climbed the world shrank
Until toy town spread beneath me.
The lights twinkled.
Where I stood nothing mattered.
The hill claimed kingship across this green land.
I picked up a piece of shattered rock, raven crag,
A token of freedom.
This jewel shone in the brightness of my imagination
This fragment of geological jigsaw.
Nobody owners the view, I thought.
I got to the beacon.
Grey granite polished by machine not wind,
On it was engraved,
“The Earth Belongeth To The Lord”
“Typical,” I thought, “these country squires get everywhere.”
Caroline Baldock ©1993