The 901 to Huddersfield.

 

Blue-butted sheep clinging to the hillsides are woollen smudges on green felt

Faintly mottled with age and growing decrepitude.

Fragments of ancient walls crisscrossing the quilted landscape

Are half finished seams defining and redefining the juxtaposition of fabrics.

Hand embroidered backstitches create paths through the panorama

While roads are unravelled seams bordered by messy ditches to be constructed, moved and rethought time after time.

The motorway looming below is an ugly fray, brutally ripped open, causing mayhem to the surrounding countryside

Xs mark the placement of buildings clustered in their cross-stitched confusion along

A trailing blue ribbon slip-stitched in meandering waves through darkened valleys of worsted cloth.

 

It’s late afternoon and the winter light is fading.

In my workspace I turn on the overhead light causing the sun to break through brocade clouds

Bringing a luminescence to the tightly woven silken threads.

Circles of shining sequins sowed like seeds over the felt

Are reservoirs feeding thirsty machines and people

Living in their cross-stitched villages, in the shadows of their buckram chimneys,

Connected by their ribbon river and their running stitched roads

And tonight, secure in their blanket stitched beds.