Penine Tunnel

We were halfway to winter:
Trees grizzled
Hills streaked white and green
Like snowdrops;
Water running dark between
Snow–daggled reeds
And sheep able to take
A philosophical bite
From not quite frozen fields.

Then with a tatoo
Like metal drums —
— into the tunnel.

Directionless,
We sit with minds bent inwards
By reflected selves.

A second roll —
— out into day.

I hardly know
These once familiar hills,
Their bony knees and knuckles
Quilted to roundness
Under a seamless anorak of snow:
Yet unsuspected flaws,
Old quarries, spoil heaps, scars
Of forgotten enterprise
Unkindly emphasised.

Set in the drenched white,
Sparse woods
Are sticks of charcoal.
Companies of inland–resting gulls,
All but invisible,
Take sudden wing, and wheel
Sooty as rooks
Against the Penine sky.

Total winter now.