Leeds
I
don’t live in Leeds, I die there, slowly
Banished
there by my peers, or shall I just
be
kind and call it my fate. Leeds left
deep
scars
in my psyche when their team beat mine in
the
FA Cup: (Leeds 3, Crystal Palace 1).
Then,
when a girl from Leeds joined my school
I
learned what bluntness meant; it stayed with me.
My
energies drain now in its suburbs.
At
night I dream of the Kingdom of Elmet,
the
forest of Loidis, sheep producing
white
woollen cloth, flaxen fields of yellow-grey.
Finishing
mills, giving way to foundries,
iron
and industry incarnating to
Leeds
and its locals; Loiners, blunt of
speech,
hard
of eye. My southern softness seems so
out
of sync so I walk by the Aire,
look
to the Atlantic, escape to the
Pennines,
my heart just longing for Wales.
Cait
O’Connor
4 comments:
Cait, it's been far too long since I have left you a message. Please know that I have been visiting, quietly, treasuring beauty in your images and words, but feeling too pressed for time to thank you enough for your gifts.
xo
Ah Cait. Although not Welsh, my heart longs for Wales too, all the way from Australia!- my husband was kind enough to surprise me with tickets to travel there with him again a while ago.
I also often feel I belong among the rich ochre colours of Outback Australia and applied as a young woman to teach there, but was refused on the grounds it would not be safe.
So like your Leeds, I sit here and wonder how a person ends up in a city they don't really want to be in - family, marriage and employment for me I guess. All important factors.
I enjoyed your poem!
Always enjoy your poems, how bleak Leeds now seems to me.
Your poem brought back those early months when we first moved to Leeds, many years ago. After a while I grew to love the place and Yorkshire. Just in time for us to move south again!
I`m so pleased to have found your blog. Enjoy being free of work and having the time and space to become who you really want to be.
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