Kenny Knight

I stare out into space and launch myself
above the landscape of mires
and bright yellow gorse,
and imagine myself to be
a pilot in a quiet aircraft.
Like witchcraft I'm a rook
who's read too much
Carlos Castaneda.

A blue and yellow kite
brightens the landscape,
given freedom of the sky.
The wind as superpower
pulls a young man
across the ground,
levitation or bust.

Looking down dark cul-de-sacs
into hidden valleys,
sweeping one blue eye
over this bleak and beautiful landscape,
I'm reminded of another moorland
as down the backroads of memory
Lorna Doone come riding,
the most beautiful woman
on my father's bookshelf,
a pin-up for the imagination,
brought to life behind
a quiet pair of reading glasses.

R.D Blackmore wrote Lorna Doone
when Honicknowle was still a country village,
two miles from the edge of Dartmoor,
five miles from the edge of the sea,
south of Woodland Wood,
north of Weston Mill.

Driving out of the city to Dartmoor
on Sunday afternoon
we adjust with ease
from bomb-site to council estate,
from seaside town to bright yellow gorse.

On the King's Highway we cross the River Dart
somewhere between Princetown and Hexworthy
and begin the long climb up snake-twist hills
through Holne and Scoriton without blinking,
past Brook Mill and its live-in peacock
hidden like gold in a rich man's shirt.

Driving from urban wild to country wild
we park between hedgerows
and move onto a moorland track.

Under Ludgate's arch of trees
I imagine the surrealists of Heyford Hall
waving as if we were fish up from the seaside
swimming in formation towards Frog Hall.

Ninety three million miles from the surface of the sun
to a green bungalow and bright yellow gorse
at the end of this Sunday afternoon tunnel.

On arrival characters of past life and present life
and fiction merge in the garden and gaze
into the beauty of the tadpole pond
then move like dancers towards the rustle of dry paper
and pirates walking backwards across the sea.