If you could go back and witness any historical event, which one would you pick? I’d go back to witness the assassination of JFK. I’ve been fascinated by it since I was a teenager, not… More
Pain
Who are you most inspired by?
How people that are so much worse off than me and are clearly struggling with a lot of pain and bad health.
They inspire me because they usually suffer in silence.
And just try to make the best of what they have.
Until Even Darkness
There will come a day the wind
Will speak my name without a voice,
When every road forgets my footsteps,
Yet still remembers where they led.
Do not search the empty doorway.
I have only changed my weather.
The stars have always hidden
Inside the wounds we could not mend.
When your hands can hold no future,
Hold the silence just the same.
Every unanswered prayer
Is still a flame without a name.
Become the thing they feared in you:
The heart that would not harden,
The river carving through the mountain
Simply because it must.
Pour every hidden season
Into the soul that does not flee.
Love is not what leaves us breathing—
Love is what survives the breath.
And if the night should close around you,
If every light forgets to burn,
Listen—
I am there
In the weight that keeps you standing,
In the grief that teaches mercy,
In the dust becoming dawn.
Walk on.
Not because the world deserves you,
Not because the ending waits,
But because somewhere beyond the silence
The universe is learning
How to speak your name.
Until the oceans lose their memory,
Until the sky forgets its blue,
I will be the unseen current
Bearing all that once was you.
Carry on.
Not away from sorrow,
But through it,
Until even darkness
Learns
To call you
Light.
Steve Halstead.
The Things That Refused to Be Bought
They told us progress came on iron wheels,
On ledgers balanced and factories lit before dawn,
That history bent beneath the weight of coin,
And every village yielded to the city.
But I remember other kingdoms.
The Sunday bells that stitched the fields together,
The smoke that curled from every chimney
Like old prayers finding their way home.
Hands that knew the language of harvest,
Voices that measured time
Not by wages,
But by swallows returning
And the slow greening of the hawthorn.
The old men carried stories
As naturally as walking sticks,
And every child inherited
A map drawn in sayings,
Superstitions,
And songs no one had ever written down.
The baker knew your grandfather,
The blacksmith knew your grief,
And weddings gathered the whole valley
Until laughter rose above the fiddles
Like birds escaping winter.
Perhaps the economists were right.
The mills grew taller than the church spires,
The roads grew straighter,
The trains outran the horses,
And money learned to travel
Further than memory.
Yet somewhere beneath the tarmac,
The footprints of dancers remain.
The wells still dream of ribbons,
The hedgerows whisper forgotten names,
And abandoned chapels hold
The echo of a congregation
Who believed the world was held together
By neighbours rather than markets.
So when evening settles upon the empty lane,
And a single blackbird rehearses
A tune older than any empire,
I feel the stubborn pulse of things
That refused to be bought or sold.
For history may be written
In the language of kings and commerce,
But the heart remembers differently:
It remembers worn flagstones,
Bread cooling on a windowsill,
The smell of wet wool and woodsmoke,
And ordinary souls
Keeping ancient promises alive
Long after prosperity had passed them by.
Perhaps that is why nostalgia hurts—
Not because the past was kinder,
But because tradition was once a quiet gravity,
Holding scattered lives in orbit,
Until we mistook movement for belonging
And traded inheritance
For speed.
Steve Halstead.
Customers
What’s your top tip to be successful in life?
Treat your customers like you would like to be treated
When I Am Gathered to the Hidden Hill
When I am gathered to the hidden hill,
Where ash and thorn keep counsel with the moon,
Do not believe the blackbird’s sudden hush
Has closed the book wherein my name was written.
For every wind that bends the silver grass
Still carries something of the life I knew;
And every stream, running over stone,
Repeats old words forgotten among men.
The heart is but a pilgrim wrapped in clay,
Who dreams itself a captive of the years;
Yet all the stars are only distant fires
Finding their way through the endless night.
Should grief come clothed in winter’s feathered grey,
And bid you wear the mask the fearful wear,
Break it as frost is broken by the dawn,
And let your spirit walk the fields unbound.
Be not the echo of another’s song,
Nor kneel before the loud and passing crowd.
The oak grows slowly from the patient dark,
And answers only to the listening earth.
If ever love should leave your heart grown cold,
Cast not your sorrow to the empty sea,
But sow it where the sleeping violets wake;
For tears are seeds from which new things may grow.
And when at last your shadow joins with mine,
Beneath the circling hawk and wheeling sky,
We shall not ask what kingdoms rose or fell,
Nor count the little triumphs of the dust.
Only the lark shall know us by our silence,
Only the stars shall gather up our names,
Until God folds the green world like a cloak,
And time itself grows quiet into song.
Steve Halstead.
A good listener
What quality do you value most in a friend?
For me having the ability to listen to others
Upon the Wolds in Spring
Upon the Wolds in spring I stood,
Where pale chalk hills dreamed silently,
And silver seeds lay in the fields
Awaiting winds that would set them free.
They gathered in the furrows deep,
A ghostly host beneath the sun,
Till one light breath crossed hill and hedge,
And westward all their flight began.
Beyond them burned the rapeseed gold,
Bright fields against the widening sky,
While clouds moved slowly overhead
And larks were singing high on high.
The old grey churches watched the years,
Half hidden by the ancient trees,
Their bells remember kings and wars,
And harvest songs upon the breeze.
In churchyard shade, the headstones leaned,
Their names grown faint with moss and rain,
While wild garlic scented the dusk
Around the sleeping rural dead.
The bluebells gathered by the yew,
A twilight sea beneath the ash,
Their quiet beauty holding fast
To older dreams that could not pass.
The villages of flint and stone
Lay folded in the gentle land,
Where cottage gardens crossed the lanes
And time seemed held by unseen hands.
Near Stamford Bridge, the green earth slept,
Though banners fell and swords were drawn;
The battle’s cry is long since gone,
And only sheep now cross the lawn.
Along the roads, the hedges bloomed,
No sound but birds and passing air,
While weathered Yorkshire faces smiled
With simple kindness everywhere.
And when the evening reached the Wolds,
With swallows turning through the blue,
It seemed the land itself drew breath,
Old England bright and wholly true.
Then for a moment all was one—
The dead, the living, earth and star;
And beauty walked the quiet hills,
Knowing how brief our journeys are.
Steve Halstead.
Beauty And Sorrow
The meadow sat outside of time,
far from the noise of roads and men.
Daisies scattered through the grass
like scraps of fallen moonlight.
Clover covered the ground,
soft as sleep on tired eyes.
Even the grass leaned low,
heavy with the weight of living.
I came there when the world got loud,
when every day felt hard to carry
and every voice wanted something.
But in that field
nothing tried to rule anything.
Bees drifted through the heat slowly.
Birdsong melted into the wind
until it felt part of the sky.
And I, carrying old griefs
like stones in my pockets,
felt something in me loosen.
Then quiet.
The daisies looked on without knowing
ambition, shame, or war.
Their short white lives glowed gently
against the dark earth.
And I thought maybe the earth is wiser
because it does not fight loss.
Clover dies.
Summer leaves.
Light fades into dusk.
Nothing curses it for going.
Only us,
building our hearts from longing,
struggle to forgive the world
for ending.
I stayed there in the grass
until the wind moved through me
Like an old familiar voice.
My sorrow became small then,
Like dust on my hands.
Some places feel thinner than others,
as if the lost still walk beside us.
That meadow felt like one of them.
At the edge of evening,
before the first star appeared,
I felt the whole world turning quietly —
living and dead, leaf and stone,
bound together.
Far away, the towns darkened,
Windows flickering like restless thoughts.
But I stayed among the daisies,
listening to the earth breathe,
finally certain
that beauty and sorrow
were always the same thing.
Steve Halstead.
Fear
What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today?
Fear
Freedom
What public figure do you disagree with the most?
All or any that want to take peoples freedoms and liberties away
They need to understand we elect them to serve
The Yorkshire Poet & Friends 