Wordsworth's Window

rydal mount: house and garden
by Joe Blades

from treeless windswept sheep-dotted
greatrigg man look across lake
district and wales to the irish sea
open to the magic that calls

wordworth wrote letters
for villagers in need
of this service in addition to
his capacity as postmaster

in his garden i walk
sloping terrace and on to far
terrace to the summer houses
where he often wrote poems

inside his windowed attic
study: bookcases desk and
chair papers scattered
as if he's just stepped out
to walk to jenkin's crag or
into ambleside

i photograph his vision
of garden and lush lands
through the multi-paned window

and downstairs buy a postcard from
his descendants to write to a poet beyond
this countryside beyond the atlantic

—reprinted from eurotrip (Pooka Press, 1996)

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Seriously blonde hair and tan, and a hand-painted shirt I made at a youth hostel in Belgium in August before I crossed the Channel and went north to Scotland, this is me, September 1983, back in Dartmouth, after four months travelling around Western Europe, England, Wales & Scotland. Photo was taken by my mother against the house wall.

t-shirt; Jim Beam
loc: brokenscandesk
temp: 33 C
sound: Talking Heads: 77