At Rodmell

A mud and stone track; crows beading barbwire;
reeds choking a ditch that has snared a swan,
wings too wide to escape: seeing these I wondered
what would keep a suicide from walking on.

Gate after gate; rusting, hanging and unhinged.
Sad-eyed Shetlands disturbed by touch. A weak sun
glazing the quarry's chalk walls to a cube of light.
And above a steep bank, the unspectacular Ouse.

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Lost and Found

Every Friday afternoon I lost and found
another father in the swimming pool. Cold,
nearly naked, side by side on the tiled-edge
of the deep end, his not-quite-happy face
stared straight ahead, down the Olympic length,
through the cafeteria's steamed up windows
and out across the playing fields. Then,
with a low, muscular spring, he dived
and was gone, unexpectedly, underwater,
sleek as a seal, propelled by the one jump.
I held my breath and counted...10 11 12,
watching him torpedo, strokeless, away from me.
When I couldn't hold it any longer, I dashed
along the pool's slippery side, deaf to
whistle shrieks and warning shouts, and
leapt into the shallows, desperately searching
the splashed-white water for his form.
At last it slid towards me, touching my legs
like an unshy dolphin, a body on the bottom.
When I thought his lungs must burst, he broke
the surface, a sunlit cascade, dripping,
glistening, smiling, as though all worldly
ot other-worldly troubles had washed off
in that deep, private, underwater passage,
gone slapping over the gullies, and now
he could take me in his arms and lift me,
and launch me like a ball, up, up, up

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Spruce

While we've been reconciling,
the rain has adorned the garden: our spruce
bowing under the glistening freight
of beaded water.
We stand back, watchful.
We know something so exquisitely poised
cannot last.