Treninnow Lane is tangled
dark and overgrown
with angled
beech and arching sycamore.
No cars drive down
and fern and nettle,
dandelion and dock slumber
in this extraordinary summer’s heat.

Spiders’ webs are spun tight
and Speckled Woods and Tortoiseshells meet,
lifting and drifting,
in and out of pools of sunlight
(on the very edge of seeing
in and out of being).

This is an old track;
ancient scents and birdsong;
old ghosts who cannot find their way back
and have no courage to move on
hover round the puzzle of some past event
with an extraordinary gracefulness,
caught within a fragment
half-insight, half-forgetfulness.

You
walk here too,
an exile
with your smile and your eyes
most innocently wise
(in and out of being,
on the very edge of seeing).

.