#NaPoWriMo #2025
Ryan’s poem invites us to imagine the “music” of a place without people in it. So today, try writing a poem that describes a place, particularly in terms of the animals, plants, or other natural phenomena there. Sink into the sound of your location and use a conversational tone. Incorporate slant rhymes (near or off-rhymes, like “angle” and “flamenco”) into your poem. And for an extra challenge – don’t reference birds or birdsong!
Happy writing!
https://www.napowrimo.net/
**The South Pennine Hills have had a great deal of money spent on them to restore them to their former glory. Now they are part of moorland conservation, which includes the constant watch for wild fires, which can wreak havoc on moorland with peat as the fire can burn deep into the earth.
Saddleworth moors are a part of these hills in what is called the Dark Peak, and the secrets I refer to are the notorious Moors Murders of the 1960s perpetrated by Ian Brady, and Myra Hindley. The body of one of their victims, Keith Bennett, is still believed to be buried there. The evil pair took the exact location to their graves.**
WATERSHED LANDSCAPE
The wind whistles its way through
the short, rough, wavy-haired grass
of my moorland paradise.
The Dark Peak is cold in
winter, hot in summer, these
moors that hold their secrets close
to their chests, with their millstone
grit and heat retaining peat beds.
Here among bilberry, heather, sphagnum moss, and cross-leaved heath, the purple grasses grow.
With the wind, they rustle and bend
mournful, yet awe-inspiring.
Here, water gurgles and rushes,
from the spurs of the rivers,
Roch and Irwell. It falls from
the rocks, tinkles over the
stream's hard bed and makes white foam. The sound of water is
never far away, it is
with the rain, almost constant.
Elemental to the earth.
Rain falls from a changing sky.
Clouds scud over the horizon,
depositing their heavy load.
From drizzle to thundering
downpour, rain nourishes the soil.
The Roman ruins, the cause
of an ancient life at Castleshaw.
Water cuts its way through the
moorland, making boggy the
grass, where shy deer might extend
a dainty hoof to squelch loudly.
Artic hares frolic here in these
South Pennine hills. The air is clear
and as sharp as glittering glass,
cold autumn and winter contrast
with the warmer spring and summer.
Here primal earth sings her songs
deep and earthy, full of her wild life.
©🦊VixenOfVerse, 2025
VIXEN of VERSE 
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