I swear the brook at the Roman Banks
turned so tight it was knotted
It calls me back before the birchwood grew
on an undulating summer green
where from the gorse a weasel and I
exchanged the briefest of eye-glitter
Pale-bibbed, fair of fur and nervous bobbed:
a land-fish, copulating, focussed ahead…
perhaps weaving or dancing or both
In the time it took to transfix me
it turned and went
and I’m gaping now as I gaped then
at the yellow shallows with pebble shoals
and flicking fishbones of grass
Here and there a sky-pool,
abandoned portrait of the sun,
lies glued from the banks
where some smoother boulder heaves
into eternity, leaving
a trickling stickleback weir
On this open sward my soldier brother
taught me to hide and never be found
A life skill from where I witness
how blind people are
But the blackbird knows I’m here;
fooling animals is quite a different thing…
15/11/24