Thought I’d have a go at something a little less structured. Not sure about it really.
When she stares at the hills
From the window, she knows that she can incline
Her head just so, and see the very edge of the Pennines
And remember following long and rocky trails,
The sun on her face, but now she’s always in
Her room. Uncomfortably she twists
In the bed and then laughs as the duvet twists
To form cottony, flower-scattered valleys, and caverns and hills
That her legs form under the duvet. She tucks herself in
Puts her head back and tries to recline
Make her muscles relax. She listlessly trails
Her hand over her face. Closes her eyes and thinks of the Pennines
She used to be out every weekend, walking the Pennines
Come home sunburned, wincing from grazes and twists
She’d leave the trails
Scramble up practically vertical hills
Unable to stay on her feet because of the incline
Crawling, flylike, feeling the pain in
Her muscles, and loving it. Gasping in
Air. the famous, health-giving air of the Pennines
Didn’t help, did it? Because then she began to decline
And nobody knows why. What makes her muscles twist,
Spasm. Keeps her from the hills
From her life. From the joy of straying away from the trails.
Her temples glisten. The tears have left trails.
Down the sides of her face, from the times that she can’t keep it in.
It’s not fair! She wants to scream from the hills
She wants to go out again, back to the Pennines.
But she spasms again, her whole body twists.
She goes foetal, now she can’t even recline.
They don’t know what is wrong. They don’t know what will halt the decline
Needles which took blood from her arms have left so many trails.
She looks out of the window again and twists
Her head. For although she’s shut in
From her window, on clear days, she can still just see the Pennines.
And while she can do that, she knows she’ll get back to the hills.
She twists in the bed and tries not to recline.
Remembers the hills, she thinks of the well trodden trails
When she closes her eyes, she is back in the Pennines
Tom Juniper Poetry 