John Lanyon lives in West Oxfordshire where he works as a gardener, linguist, musician and writer. He is approximately 25% of the poetry quartet The Four Wordsmen (www.fourwordsmen.com). John is excited by the secret lives of words, the play between the animate and inanimate world, the spirit of places. He thinks a poem has a kind of DNA and if you can find the first piece the rest will follow. It’s detective work. Tea helps.
The Whit-Horn* is Calling
Four walls are four too many
the road too hard
people too much
Everyone needs a forest
Come meet the spirits of
hart and hind
boar, hare and wolf
Come seek the nightjars at dusk
Come feel the heat rising
from the charcoal-burners’ kilns
Come stalk the ghost of Gilmore
coming home from Van Dieman’s Land
Come heal your eyes
at the Iron Well
Come meet your sweetheart
at the Forest Fair
Come to the hidden places
make love there
Wychwood, they would steal you
plough you
develop you
Wychwood, I find you vulnerable
I find you hungry
for the press of my step
You will never be familiar
That is the whole point.
John Lanyon
* Traditional to some Oxfordshire villages, the Whit-Horn or Peeling-Horn is made from twisted willow bark pinned together with thorns. It was blown to announce the annual Whitsun hunt, the only time the villagers were allowed to hunt in the former royal forest of Wychwood in West Oxfordshire.