Moorland

Moorland by RS Thomas

It is beautiful and still:
the air rarefied
as the interior of a cathedral

expecting a presence. It is where, also,
the harrier occurs,
materialising from nothing, snow-

soft, but with claws of fire,
quartering the bare earth
for the prey that escapes it;

hovering over the incipient
scream, here a moment, then
not here, like my belief in God.



(Photograph by me, poem by the old misery-guts RS Thomas who can be read about here.)