Myth-tangled

Four poems by Steve Nash from The After Valley, a collection reimagining the Calder Valley in Yorkshire as a post-apocalyptic landscape of folklore, ecological memory, and psychic collapse.

Framed as fragments, field notes, and “found” texts, the poems suggest a vanished world where the boundary between natural and human histories has blurred.

Much of the imagery draws from the real history and geography of the Calder Valley, refracted through a speculative lens that imagines the land itself speaking through riverbeds, mill ruins, and abandoned pathways. The After Valley is both an act of remembrance and a gesture toward future recoveries – a field guide written for places not yet forgotten.

Roots in the Ruin
At the base of a ruin that once held
a crown, there’s a myth tangled
in the rotweed. They say if you dig
and leave three silver coins
something will return.
First a skull will finger 
from the soil and creak
its hollow mouth wide,
hands, they say, will reach
out through the teeth, gritstone
fingernails tendrilling toward you,

and then comes the request,
the price of the bargain.
You won’t be seen again.
Until another seeks out the same stone
and your turn to tell the tale will come. 

The "three silver coins" myth reoccurs in several regions. Sometimes it's buttons. Once it was teeth. Scholars remain divided on the matter of price.

Mill Breath
Hills picked bare, receded wave of industry
scrounging the edgeland; flotsam of mill tower
and grist, a valley churned once too often.
Still the night chimneys breathe.

Remnants of a tide on the rise, rolling
against grains of silt and a song of cracked
stone. Shadows flicker behind half-drunk cairns.
Creatures of the night valley casting
their dice, trading ownership of every mound 
of sulphur-sick soil and each blade
of grass. 

Stars! They’re everywhere – littering the bruise
of sky that barges through vague queues 
of cloud; a map to honour and a heritage 
to connect through a codex scrawled in the ether.

Wake wood, wormwood, drop soil, and millstone
shimmering under a stuttering of curlews,
each singing to each, each naming the other.

Though disputed, some believe this poem was written by a mill chimney, during the brief period when industrial structures were capable of dreaming.

Dancers
The steps you take now
will miss you next spring.
They will sit in the ash 
and talk of those subtle 
shapes you cast over 
the grass, white in the moonlight.
They will share a smoke
and imagine they had feet
to recreate that silly drunken
moment you’d forgotten by summer.
They will talk and turn
you into stories.  

Compass won’t agree with itself.

The Collector
Way below the drift line
a half-folded figure
circles the valley floor
where land once gargled
almost ocean.
He stops and presses
his fingers into the earth,
now and then pulling loose
something that gleams,
and shoves it into 
already heavy pockets.
He jolts as a hawk shadow
slides over his shapes
and then carries on his search,
rooting through mud
where it feels like
the edge of the world. 

This figure appears in multiple post-collapse records. Always alone. Always pocketing light. It is advised not to speak to him if encountered.

Dr Steve Nash is a poet, novelist, and lecturer from Yorkshire, UK. He is the author of four poetry collections. His work explores folklore, landscape, psychogeography, and the blurred edges between ecological and personal memory. A founding editor of Spelt Magazine, Steve’s writing has received awards including the Not the Forward Prize for Poetry and the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Performer. https://www.stevenashwrites.com

Poems copyright © Steve Nash 2025.