Not just a walk
Gills and a gaping jaw
Caught in a fishing line
The creature’s freedoms
Consigned to memory
Impaired, struggling to rise
Oxygen-depleted blood
Baptised in despair,
Will, sapped to the core
Suspended between
The depths and the sun
Turning and twisting
On an axis it didn’t choose
And so it was as I trudged
Up Sidcot’s shaded gullies
To the nettle-bound radio mast,
Distractions, undoing and
Dulling the beauty of the
Horizon-wide, sun-soaked
Somerset Levels and St
James’s spire seeking heaven
Half a flock of sheep
For company in the shade
Looking on helpless to
Unthread the tangled line
Later, within a hymn
In a deluge of Spirit
My heart sings songs
Of untethered joy
Now I remember
The moss-covered walls
The poor arthritic ewe
A golden field of barley
And the soothing crunch of
Of gravel underfoot
On the final leg
Home