Rivers and woods, clearings and falls. We come to follow the path through Freeholder’s Wood, to wind past coppiced hazels along this most famous stretch of the River Ure. 
Early autumn, and we are still unsure in this landscape. Paving stones leer with animals’ faces. Carved benches wait for our bones.
The place names are ancient, and shape our lips to summon the alien past: Hawes, Keld, Askrigg, Swinithwaite; the mountain pass, the spring, the ridge where ash trees grow, the clearing made by burning. And Aysgarth of the falls; gap in the hills where oak trees stand.
This is the land of the Danelaw.
- Aysgarth Falls –
- the gentle murmur
- of Scandinavian tourists
Aysgarth Falls was one of the first places we visited after our tramping boots arrived (slow boat from New Zealand). The date I’ve written down was September 6th, 2003. The story it relates is factually accurate, right down to the tourists. The irony was too much to resist, and I wrote an early version of this haiku in the car on the way home. I think it counts as haiku rather than senryu – there are echoes of one of Basho’s most famous haiku:
- natsukusa ya
- tsuwamano-domo ga
- yume no ato
- summer grasses –
- the remains
- of warrior’s dreams
Originally this haibun was going to include a section about the other part of that trip – visiting Bolton Castle. But I think there’s more effect in keeping them separate. I hadn’t intended this one to get so dark and ominous, but I like it. And I suspect that adding anything more to it would dilute that.
For a while I had Danish tourists in the last line. It scans better than Scandinavian. But in the context of the haibun, it rubs too closely against the last prose sentence – the reference to the Danelaw. And, as my extremely useful husband pointed out, would I be able to tell from the murmuring voices that they were Danish and not (say) Norwegian? Or Swedish? Or Finnish?
