HIGH FORCE TO LOW FORCE (Upper Tees in full spate) Under turquoise skies and an optimistic sun the river is roller-coasting, hell-bent for the sea, helter-skeltering over the edge, freefalling from high; deafening in its urgency, the water turns to smoke - billowing out to float as crystal powder to the pool beneath Like twin towers crashing to earth floating as dust clouds into the street below Catching its breath, the river resumes its run, powering its way over rocks, frothing and foaming, spinning and spiralling, shifting silt and gravel to tattoo its name on the cold river bed - the magnetic impulse of the sea draws energy from the hills in an unstoppable flood. Rattling onwards, it rushes downstream forcing trees and shrubs to bend in its path skittering, somersaulting kayaks take their chance before the lower falls where the molten river tumbles forth to shimmer in the sunlight as diamonds spilling from a jeweller's velvet pouch. Lindsay Balderson

	SHEPHERDESS On't hills by misen t'day wit bliddy yows. Yon lile un's bin nowt but a bother sin his mam deead. Pap fed 'is bin an' still as daft as a bucket. Sithee, lile un.What'll happen thee if't Norsemen come a'vikin an a ravigin? Can tha' scamper away by thisen? T'others 'll herd togither but thou daft lile midgit, thou'll race bleatin down't croft an' show wer't geese is kept. If th' come I's'll hide thee in me cloak, but what if th' strike me 'ead off fust, I's'll fall on thee an' squish thee flat as a cow pat, lile bleater. Me mam ses thir far away up 't Carlisle but our Edwin meks us frit wi' tales o' rape an' blood eagles. That ud be a sight t' see, yon gurt bully Aelfric clarted all ower't church wall. I's'll hide int' barley field, nay th' mun burnt't, I's'll hide in't midden. GLOSSARY Lile little Clarted covered Midden dung heap Yows ewes Pap bottle Blood eagles torture performed by the Vikings on their victims Margaret Rule

	MAUD In the corner near the window seat you sit silent and immobile, sending shiver of shock through friends who pop in to visit and forget you're there. You are stuffed. Your belly a soft pillow, no substance to your woolly arms, your wasted legs. A mock-up in a tie-dye scarf and fleecy gloves. Let's face it, you are never going to come into the garden, feet planted firmly in those slippers. Fixed as you are to that chair. Your time is up, you'll have to be dismantled. Your clothes returned to rightful owners, pillows and cushions put back to bed. Marilyn Longstaff

	THE QUARTZ IN YOUR VALLEY for Barry MacSweeney To find the quartz in your valley I must make sure it's raining, a settled rain of fluent chiming like a rivulet from the fells, follow the course over dead gravel onto the marbled slab of the river, wade upstream through erosion of rocks where the glacier picked its way not carefully from hills, where waterfalls hang from pillars like tresses of naiads' hair yet fracture in drops like facets of stone. I must travel up where the low cloud skirts and water clatters in the cold beck. It is there the quartz glitters. It will gleam rose and cloudy pearl among your tumblestones. It has to be dislodged from wild continuous chatter, an ore of a kind, in the high up bubbling seed bed of the river. The mist will come down, closing the fell in loose gauze fetters as I immerse my hand into the pain of spring water, all winter's chill collected like bundled barbed wire. Up to the wrist the water will boil near to freezing. I will prize free the sharp gem prickles, so like ice, from its setting. If you had a heart it would be this quartz, if you had a body it would be this water, slipping into the tidal reaches of the Tyne. S.J. Litherland

	PINK PEBBLES Pink pebbles lie on the hard smooth slab and the sea laps them gently. Bird feet fret the sand grained from past pebbles rubbing smoothing shards to mica-glint gleaming in the sun like shattered fragments of the sea-path glare. Pink pebbles are carried by strong currents from broken slabs incised by ice. Uniqueness lost in union becomes individual once more grain upon grain until seasons and times change to aeons and the process is begun again. Pink pebbles lie on the hard smooth slab. Anne Hine

	FOLLOWING TRADITION When people ask him why he makes besoms the traditional way, still slaves so hard in the Northumbrian forest the way his father did and his grandfather did, he mumbles something about Harry Potter and how orders are well up this year. He doesn't say anything about the whispering in the wood as the rings stir, how he's called by them curling and uncoiling as he thumbs the besom shaft, how he adds splinters for spice as requested. He can't describe their eyes, blue, so blue, their hair boiling in berries and leaves. How they wear black cloud and wind stars round their ankles, how they caress him as he works, impatient for him to finish. He forgets to mention their sweet-succulent vein-flesh fusion, how he longs to paint their nails with blue polish and to lie with them in hot moist grass. They show him their tight muslin dresses, cross-breasted in gold and allow him to taste bitter chocolate as he traces the tattooed spells on their forearms. He makes no reference to the time he was late for an order. How they showed him the way they could suck off faces with a look and peel off souls as easy as shelling peas. He keeps silent about when he can read the angry scuttering in the leaves, how the brooms hiss as they touch them, how they shimmer. The noises they can make when they are excited. Where he bears their mark. Diane Cockburn

	STONE Edge of land once hard against the sea now crumbling into foam, swish, swoosh, shatter, tumbling crags into salty water. Quarried by a creeping sea. This metamorphic rock, pummelled and sliced, tipped and tossed into the sea, is gritty to taste and spat back. Pat Maycroft

	IF I WERE A GIANT this boulder, dropped here through a hole in my pocket, would be the size of a plumstone to me rough-hewn to you to me smooth as a pebble tossed from hand to hand and tossing it I'd stride in my seven-league boots from cliff to cliff, kicking down scree searching for another boulder so I could play fivestones, longstones, knucklebones but from up here with my head in the opal sky all I can see is the lozenge of emerald which is the Island. Joanna Boulter

	UNDER THE ANGEL Stealthily, sideways, I creep towards him: oh, those handsome legs, that fearless head, the effortless span of vast wings. I edge carefully, while his colour roars into the autumn wind. I cannot face him. Perfectly poised, massively square, he performs a ballet anchored to the earth. One glance and I'm turning away, shoulders shuddering. Such solid elegance. So soaringly grounded, he speaks to the land, the blue sky, the clouds, of something other than nature, while the sun explodes in astonishment before him. Vicki Thomas