Calling Cathy: a prosery and audio narration

June 12, 2026

Calling Cathy: a prosery and audio narration

Sanaarizvi, host for the d’Verse Poets Prosery: A View from the Hills, invites us to write a Prose piece of up to — or exactly — 144 words that includes a line from Yvor Winters’ poem On a View of Pasadena from the Hills: “The hills so dry, so dense the underbrush, that where I pushed my way the giant hush was changed to soft explosion.”

I hope you enjoy my piece Calling Cathy, that this prompt inspired.

Calling Cathy

The hills so dry, so dense the underbrush, that where I pushed my way the giant hush was changed to soft explosion.
Ahead, a solitary tree leans — a dark silhouette against the wild sky. A stubborn survivor on the moor.

I scrabble upward past unpicked bilberries. I pick one; sweet juice slipping across my lips. 
I whisper “Cathy,” then shout the name so it can fly with the whistling air —

“Caaathy!“

The wind snatches my voice, carrying off the ghost of a favourite book.
I look to the distance. My hair streams behind me in a sudden gust. I gather my imaginary skirts and run through the grasses, breath quickening in the rising wind — which murmurs, “Heathcliff.”

“Heeeathcliff.”

There’s a change in the air — a scented promise of rain drifting o’er the moor.

I should turn back. I hate it when my jeans get wet.


_{—Lesley Scoble, June 2026}

Audio — Calling Cathy

Narrated by me

Calling Cathy, Written, narrated, and sound design by Lesley Scoble

Calling Cathy | Digital pencil©️Lesley Scoble

NOTES
This is a true story.
I did call Cathy, and I did shout Heathcliff while walking on the moors at Haworth, Yorkshire — the same moors that inspired Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. And yes, I ate a bilberry (several, in fact). And yes, we turned back when it started to rain.
(It rained hailstones, actually.)

I love the wildness and Brontë‑soaked romance of the Yorkshire moors. Here’s a photo of how I dress when I walk there.