Rainsticks of life

Mark Smalley considers the lithosphere, the rocky world beneath our feet, beginning with the chalk hill above Uffington and a wild ride with the white horse.

The Uffington Gallops

Huge and white, muscular lines spring up
the Downs, chase rump and hoof 
through green flanks drumming, 

chalked against blue, blazing bold, 
hacking through hill, sea grains quickened, 
shored up, reaching headlong, neck 

and neck, captivated by plankton, 
skeleton upon skeleton riding 
bareback and bitless, drawing 

near, wild-eyed and sides steaming. 
Dizzied, I stumble and fall, kiss 
the ground which rears up, grazed by rough 

grass as blue horizon, hedgerows and 
dark woods tilt and lurch, reasserting 
their place, suspended once more 

in the dusty haze, hovering, watched by one 
hard eye, pinned, the other, unseen,
looking deep within, unblinking.

Touchstone 
 
Oolooks and oolite  
light the stony path to 
knowing my not knowing, 
a riddle composed of warm  
touchstone, cold headstone  
and, in between, a hearthstone 
whose gritty bits  
rattle down  
through  
my  
rainstick  
life.

Lundenes farmen-gården

Kelp curtains exhale, draw back, 
silver bubbles rising
like prayers from a prairie roof 

grazed by seahorses, paddock-freed. 
Lichen listens, unbuttons 
its rock-faced whorls 

watching tides rise 
over the fuss, scratch and rub 
of undergrowth scoured, foreshored.

Outhouses, autumn colours,
all that doing undone, lap by lap. 
Up past the flagpole and the stacked

wood piles, birch bark unpeeling, waiting for winter,
flotsam queuing at the long drop loo, 
all is pacified, slowly rendered marine,

barely pausing at the homestead’s 
worn threshold, reclaiming the long-tenanted 
hearth, step by step, washing 

the wide-eyed windows from inside. 
Red oxide planks lift softly off stone footings, 
shingles ease apart, relieved of their clouts, 

belongings lightly fingered, rearranged:
hairbrush, lapskaus on the hob, thimble and loom, 
consumed by white sand, 

while kith and kin rocking in their chairs, 
snoring in pine bunks,
fathoming their daily rounds,

are mesmerised once more by 
dancing light on water
which knocks now at the mountain’s door.

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Mark Smalley:

Mark Smalley was born on London clay, raised on Northamptonshire ironstone, and now lives on a limestone ridge overlooking Bristol. He is a longtime producer of radio features and documentaries for BBC Radio 4, now freelance, and a co-founder of Climate News Tracker.

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Poems copyright © Mark Smalley 2026.

Aerial View of Uffington White Horse at Harvest Time by Dave Price, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons