The New Lyke Wake Club

Couple of Condolences : Kate Marriott and Joseph Dendle 

While Chernobyl spat its nuclear spray,
My own father walked this way.
Forty years passed and here I stand,
Ready to cross this northern land.

He left me tales of bog and stone,
of wind that leaves a man alone.
So I came armed with guidebook page,
and stories passed from age to age.

We came as couple, new and small,
less than six months in love at all.
And if the moor we could complete,
then perhaps our love, life could not defeat.

But things went wrong from the beginning,
The starting stone seemed to be missing.
A kilometre we walked, which felt quite far,
To find the stone just 10 meters from the car.

The forecast promised calmer skies,
the weather witches told their lies.
They said the day would stay warm and fair,
but rain soon came slanting through the air.

Now one of us has earned the name,
the ‘Witch’ her title and her fame.
So we ask with half a smirk,
which witch is better at her work?
The weather witch who reads the sky,
or she who crossed the heather high?

Soon the railway gave us faster pace,
flat and smooth we jogged our race,
A flatter track, a freer run,
a stretch of miles more quickly done.

Though we were unsupported and self-sustained,
a Red Lion pit stop briefly was gained.
The porcelain throne had called our sphincter,
definitely not one that made a picture.

Then bog arrived without a sound,
and dragged us knee-deep in the ground.
For days thereafter, stained with peat,
our peasant feet looked rough and beat.

We crossed beneath the radar’s gaze,
at Flyingdales’ unseen ways.
Yet though the sky had eyes above,
below we found no path to love.

The heather rose up, purple and deep,
By this point we just wanted sleep.
We were not lost from radar’s view,
but lost in all we walked into.

At Lilla Cross we saw with delight,
The final mast had come in sight.
But hours passed and though closer we came,
that bloody mast had moved again.

Then burned land came, ash and bone,
a moor reduced to broken stone.
The wind picked up the burnt remains,
and filled our eyes with grit and pains.

No guidebook spoke of this at all,
no father’s tale recalled its fall.
Just stripped-back earth and drifting air,
and nothing there was soft or fair.

In final miles a man and dog,
appeared through mist and shifting fog.
My father came in quiet grace,
to meet us near the ending place.

He offered help to ease the load,
but we kept our packs, we kept our road.
Though weight was pressed on aching frame,
we bore it still, and did not change.

Like at the start we had been wrong,
We found the ending stone was gone,
A trig point stood where we first thought,
the final stone we might have caught.

But we soon then found the proper end,
where stones and story both transcend.
We closed what once had first begun,
fourteen and a half hours ago, under sun.

One path once walked by father’s feet,
returned again through wind and peat.
The moor could test, but did not break,
what six short months had dared to make.

A Witch and Dirger, from now we’re known,
And we’ll walk together, wherever we roam.

With deepest sympathy,
Joseph and Kate