Saturday 31 December 2011

Winter Widdop Water

I often wonder about the secret life of the high reservoirs at Widdop and Walshaw Dean during the dark, and especially in the long nights of winter.  Sometimes moonlight, sometimes starlight but mostly deep, deep black. And no matter how many times I read it, nothing better expresses the strange cold life of Widdop than Ted Hughes poem of the same name:

Where there was nothing
Somebody put a frightened lake.

Where there was nothing
Stony Shoulders
Broadened to support it.

A wind from between the stars
Swam down to sniff at the trembling.

Trees, holding hands, eyes closed,
Acted at world.

Some heath-grass crept close, in fear.

Nothing else
Except when a gull blows through

A rip in the fabric

Out of nothingness into nothingness