Lakeland Dipper 15

Sprinkling Tarn and Great Gable

I doubt my sanity most days, although doubting sanity is a fair indicator of some sanity ... unless its a double bluff of course ... and I've forgotten what 'normality' feels like anyway ... but just when I thought Grisedale Tarn was chilly, this was jolly chilly in spite of the sunshine. I was reunited with fingers and feet when I returned to the valley bottom. Plus, I'm not sure what possessed me to go up one of the main routes to Sca Fell on a bank holiday weekend, with the rest of the world, although at least I was late as usual and most people were on their way down. Still, it gets me out.

Entropy (by Neil Rollinson)

Your coffee grows cold on the kitchen table,
which means the universe is dying.
Your dress on the carpet is just a dress,
it has lost all sense of you now.
I open the window, the sky is dark
and the house is also cooling, the garden,
the summer lawn, all of it finding an equilibrium.
I watch an ice cube melt in my wine,
the heat of the Chardonnay passing into the ice.
It means the universe is going to die:
the second law of thermodynamics.
Entropy rising. Only the fridge struggles
to turn things round but even here there's a
hidden loss. It hums in the corner, the only sound
on a quiet night. Outside, everywhere in the vast
sky stars are cooling, I think of the sun
consuming its fuel, the afternoon that is past,
and your dress that only this morning
was warm to my touch.