flayed to the bone with wind and rain,
where watercourses double as rights of way
and the black-nibbed sheep
are tireless scribes
who annotate an endless text of grass
where we came upon a massive oak,
uprooted, upended, having dragged
from the underworld
a half-ton boulder, which it held
aloft in its claws like a trophy
where the river trots
on small white hooves
over the pebbles or – slowing – spreads
luminous
over treacle-pot depths
and the mist, like a night nurse,
comes with soothing hands
to the long dormitories of the hills.
© Anthony Watts