Personal Helicon

 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.

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