A WINTRY MORNING IN HOLMFIRTH... (My poem about the Kirklees town, on a cold morning, 2015...)

 A Wintry Morning In Holmfirth…

Morning bus halts to

Suck in huddling commuters,

Then drives on.

Local stores lurk to

Prey on dawdling customers

But instead snow drives in,

Thickening then whitening

The jumble, the cluster

Of Holmfirth’s glum stone.

But the River Holme thrashes 

Defiance, plunges and rushes

In its hurry to reach the Colne,

Hissing with all the fuss it can muster…

Mourning chimneys, bolt straight,

Stack in jutting redundancy,

As, high above

Winter trees mock in lines

Like a sweep’s brushes, or a discrepancy.

Yet indeed snow flurries through,

Thickening, then lightening

The pile, the muster

Of Holmfirth’s glowering stone.

But the River Holme crashes

Belligerence, lunges and pushes

In its scurry to join the Colne,

Cussing with its eddies, tossed in a cluster…

Awry, sombre, dislocated pixels, 

Like sepia kaleidoscope beads,

The irreverent pieces of an austere wall,

Speak of unsettled souls, with no leads.

The snug church tower’s façade

With its blackened scars of death and flood,

Contrast with its pallid clock-face,

As inevitable chilled hands throb like spilled blood…

Pete Ray

Being in Holmfirth, South Yorkshire, Thursday 30^th January 2015.

This was the view from a window in the Old Bridge Inn and Coffee House…