poetry

PERSONAL HELICON

For Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. I savoured the rich crash when a bucket Plummeted down at the end of a rope. So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch Fructified like any aquarium. When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call With a clean new music in it. And one Was scaresome for there, out of ferns and tall Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, To stare; big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

DOOR INTO THE DARK