This was the first piece of ‘homework’ I encountered at Mexborough Read to Write. A joke was going round about watching all the bigfoot films, somebody mentioned Barnsley…
Big Foot In Barnsley
(Spectemus Agenda)
Step-scrubbed, seg-sparked, blinking Moores
once swarmed as one
over Cliffe, Clough and Dearne
Behind a wind-sung tear
pre-runic talk of bestial empathies
softened the hide
and dragons dreamed became genetic memories
Apples of gold, caught in Masonic aprons
were placed in the hands
of those crushed by fortune or fate
Known by fen and reed
emerging from a tropical sea
and set as they were to outwit the wild
and outwit the clever -
they undid the quick too
beyond Romany camp,
beyond castle-kept keep
Silk stone and silver wood
whose lungs were ripped out
by lesser species,
hide jewels yet brighter than the grubby,
goose-dabbled lake of broken moons
And if faith is lost and found
like stellar alignment
or a passing formation of petals
how might we face this animal,
that walks on higher ground -
fragile as a spark from a falling star -
when the magic of a place has been ritually slain
for non-existent gods?
They were here.
Probably up to the time
that Disney poofed them like Comanche souls
into the camera obscura