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
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.
On the Moors, Haworth, Yorkshire
THANK YOU
My gratitude to Sanaarizvi and d’Verse Poets for the inspiration.
And my thanks to you the reader, for spending this time with me.
LesleyScoble.com 
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