Sunday, and your voice drops from the satellite,
freighted with vowels, soft, sanded oak’s grain.
‘Darlo’. Speech well-worn like the cobbles in your road.
‘Love, shall you be going to that?’. Travelled language,
easy, open and close, like the back yard gate.
Burr of dialect, absorbed different worlds.
Factory and settlement. Migration from hill and salt.
Our conversations clear as a whistle, well-worn as coins.

I see the neat square of daylight in your window.
Hear the rattling valley when you speak.

Then, I am of moorland. Marra. Held firm in the wind’s hollow.