The Lights Above And The Valley B'low

The artist awoke for no particular reason. Perhaps it was a jolt in a dream, the imaginary thud of huge and heavy hand shears, or the sound of ancient spindle and bullrushes. I was already awake, thinking a thousand thoughts. (Many of them good.) I recommended the artist get out of bed, just as I had done, and walk to the French windows. As the artist crept across the room, our son continued sleeping in the sofabed beside me and our daughter in the large double-bed. The artist paused and parted the thin linen curtains. It must have been about three in the morning. I watched as she stared gently out at the moonlight illuminating an entire valley. A single electric light shone like solitude from about a mile away. Other than that, it was as if we were the only people in the world. With a silhouetted nod of the head, she agreed about the beauty and returned quietly to bed. There used to be so many clothiers and millers and shearmen and weavers round these parts, some of them the best in the world. Streams ran with scarlet dye where the military uniforms were made - it was also the colour of royalty - and someone somewhere must surely have seen the colour as some kind of prophecy of blood. I saw no such menace when I looked out, nor I believe did the artist. I can admit to a feeling of brief sadness but felt a presence of greater authority too. Round these parts, weavers regularly worked sixteen or seventeen hour days and mothers and children often lived in bare, cold and empty cottages. A famous soldier sent to quell the increasingly angered workforce wrote uncomfortably of their hardship. Last night, though, the light was magical, transcendental, and I saw the artist in a new - moonlight they call it - light.