Slack Poem by Antony Rowland

Steeped in leg-work, the legendary cobbles rise
to a lightning church and its pristine elder,
hard by black sheep: the soot-rotted, Calderdale stone.
The terraces close on themselves, slab homes
to open light, Methodist grit, Wesleyan bezels
against their moor perch, clutch showers and now picnics
in the pinfold, falling away to Mankinholes.
I stand on Jeremiad for your snap after
the pens freeze by a spool of plastic angels,
the faux amethyst hair cone and scrubbed HUGHES.
Edith Farrar and William flank, untended.
Understood as wood, bole and leaf, stocked
with malisons, the village holds cloud, whips sleet,
lets its hill-scarps cup the mist, then burn.