Chalk Vespers
1847
Mary Anning,
Palaeontology pioneer,
Vanishes from the Upper World. Her
Spirit, with
Cephalopod agility,
Enters the chalk-pored
Dorset Downs near Lyme,
Harrowing the holloways of
The Great Ridgeway, as it glances
Stonehenge and
Wayland Smithy waymarks.
Crests the Chilterns at Ivinghoe Beacon,
Grooving the ancient droves of
Icknield Way, until it lopes into an
Eleventh-hour chicane at
Knettishall Heath.
From where,
Drawn by the timber-circled
Seahenge lodestone, and
Shadowing the progress of
Penitents along Peddars Way, it
Emerges at Holme.
Following the setting sun to The Wash,
Mary Anning’s spirit
Nests itself in the dreams of one
Henry L'Estrange Styleman Le Strange Who, sensing a gathering
Apocalypse - Uncovering, Unfolding -
Seeks to eclipse his north-winded
Fishing village with a
West-facing wise folly.
Gothic-revival reverie bodied forth in
Honeystone-Town, Hunstanton,
Quarried and fashioned from the very
Carrstone that edges out
Albion in the
Layer-Cake Cliffs,
Where
Solstice-sun illumination of
Ancient barrows has since
Become a nightly Vespers:
Stratified slice of Earth’s
Deep-Time testimonies
Bathed in an
Evening light that
Sanctifies seventy-seven
Million years of the
Cretaceous.
Man’s two-millennia
Tenure as
Crown of Creation:
Guttering lantern glow that
Cuts a
Faltering path through the
Gloaming.
© Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025
Map of the Great Chalk Way network of long-distance paths, starting at Lyme Regis, Dorset in southwest England, and ending at Holme-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, East Anglia. Mary Anning's ghost/spirit follows this route in the poem.
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2021
Layer-Cake Cliffs at Hunstanton, Norfolk, England.
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©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2021
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