Trilobite in the Wenlock Shales
When the kingfisher flitted
Under the hazels I entered again into boyhood
Over a hurrying water.
The church clock dropped the quarters nearby
And from a little school
Children hallooed like enchanted animals
But I was watching a water that shipped the wild apples
With all the time in the world
Patient as a fisher bird
In the hazel light to learn to be a finder
Of life, its mark, on a black stone
Opened like a butterfly, a soul that water,
Swaling and swaling, had let be seen.
· First published in Poetry London