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Akeland

I found the pencil, lost out in the Close,

lime stripe as straight as mown cathedral lawn,

sharpened to the point where its given Cumbrian name

had been reduced to ‘akeland’. Its lead stayed

core, its power like a uranium rod,

potential as prayer that drives plea and direction,

drawn between blunt and point with use and sharpening.

I imagined it pocketed, taken North in parallel

to the masons’ track, plumb-line from Durham to Orkney

to work the same liverish stone into cathedrals.

My voyage was rather North-west, out of Oban,

the pencil stowed away in a wax jacket pocket

to copy Gaelic into a notebook, seeking

‘cathedral’ among words for ‘midge’ and ‘Indian takeaway’.