Floodplain

Land between histories, mead
made by water - look carefully
at the land (climb over barbed wire first):
grasshopper, harvestman, wasps, the flies.
What richness still: groups of spiders'
endless forms, web of shape and hollow.

This is a place where nettles dominate, and sportsfield grass,
fat bluebottles whisk by.
Down at the stream wren flies across
pond skaters, bumblebees, meadow browns.

Bubbles rise in groups (Tarka? Don't follow them).
Take each path that comes - folk trails, homeless trails, dog trails.
All flowers are purple and yellow.
The deepest green of leaves approaching fall.

Summer hits the line (human line).
A sky best seen framed.
I take paths knowing roughly my direction
but not if this route might take me home. I stride in
grasshopper sounds, intermittent statements from the birds.

The ring-road's a clarity of sound, the river
all lenses drifting past the light. What grows in it
rises from grey beds.

There's joy in looking close -
the world makes its own way
(as if I did not have to leave footprints)
(as if between the city's gravel beds and the borders
written by roads I could drift without humanity)

Note – I made notes to write a prose piece, but it wouldn’t listen and so became a note-poem instead. I might revisit for a piece of prose at a later date.