Two Poems

DIRGERS

Derailment. Round the valley
a horse-shoe of cinders
glowing with ghoulish walkers
hooded orange, red, grey.

One of the many paths
where trains give way to ramblers,
lovers, runners, solitary amblers -
railless, rain leaning in swathes.

A bevy of gaudy monks
on pilgrimage. Boots and socks
mourn with the colour of bogs
lurched out of by limping ranks -

Never more of them than today -
since night rutting a moor
that has been trackless. Feet sore
...