Chasing Flight Poems by Dan Crockett, grabs by Ollie Banks

1. Songs for the Empty Sky2. Ripples3. Chasing Flight

1. Songs for the Empty SkyYorkshire teaches you frustration, disappointment, patience, cold. The tide will be too low in the morning, too high in the afternoon. As the wind turns, it will blow the promises away. Flatness. Then a golden moment arrives.

Heartwood Thrall

The wyke rests its wildnessSleep now, beast, sleepFor we dance in the dawnDeep in the heartwoodMorning light comes strafingParting the ancient oaksLandslides under urchin pawsNew pages in the book of stoneThat fiend with giant handsWho smacks eternal lipsGroans a query:How long can this last?Place of endless pastVast nothingness spaceTree roots to the edge And beast face behind With fearsome breathSalt in the whiskersFire torching the grovesBurning to the brineThe beck calling out:We are clinging to youYou are our one hope

(But in cracked pavingPlants grow thick and freeInfinite capacityOf this tranquil landThis rock and sandThis mist-wrapped sea,To heal)From beast cliff a bird keensThe peel rendsStitches in the cloth of timeA final, futile roar appends:This is richer than goldThe horizon lifts The beck boilsTrees wrap the shoreline bendsFalling from the cliff,Falling fastFlightless, unflying, not trying to soar but resigned to the crunch of the floorTight with trappingsThe last question unheardFlightless birds

2. RipplesSuffolk is a blighted shore. As well as being on a sheltered part of a sheltered coast, the sea is pitifully shallow and there are huge chalk beds that block all but the most determined swell. We become used to staring at ripples dancing across the sand. To be a surfer in the southern part of the North Sea you have to be ready and prepared to be solidly skunked. We rely on a vivid imagination and freakish conditions.

Uncommon Ideals

Bay burn the firstRunners of the dawn trainRipples, creeping in beneath castlesUnder dismantled factoriesBetween oak groins tar blackOnto reefs of hellAnd fain the eyes that trackThis first building ofthe swell

A copper peak like running snuffBang, bang, bangFrom the north she poursStirring the remaining codSister wind swung southWaking the Farne-bound sealsAnd met by land she roarsDipped in sepia,flayed bisterDelight for uncommon ideals

The first breath is a beauty;Whispering of the north like a kissGilded hammer come tappingLicking the dun dunesSweeping the tawny seaA chill fist come rappingAt the doors of you,of me

2. Chasing FlightThere’s a moment at the close of Without Thought. Mark Dickinson, who surfs in the film, is buried deep in the tube at Thurso. A gull fights the staunch offshore and seems to hover. For a second the two converge...

Foil GoldBittersweet nothing.Licking the rotund geosPoint after pointOf flatnessAnother thousand milesTo perch onWeary haunches andWatch the calm ocean murmur

A little more weightPerhaps the changing tideWill change our fateOr it’s simply lateOnwards, past reefs rememberedToday unfelt by passing lumps

Where the angry roar?The thin mistOf the forecast swell?The pattern lureSkipped outA bum trace, no barb in the hookYou took me for a sucker, sea