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![Image for the poem Ambling Fleet](/images/uploads/poemimages/484375.jpg?1686426526)
Ambling Fleet
I've wandered beyond my shadow
to where the sunlight tapers off through canopies of dark green trees
and darker still
the limbs and seeds.
I have seen egrets here,
dropwort and driftwood curled
into the shape of a slumbersome badger,
no one perishes the thought.
I wouldn't mind
if you happened to
walk with me a while,
down the verge and track,
edged by ferns,
scored by beech,
we can divert
from the shine of the beach's mouth
to follow the upward line, slide,
guide bodies along the slip of river
to where silt has cavernous hands
and the liquid of Erme
lays in her pit.
We can share
water from an unsealable tin
so we don't shrivel,
miles out,
like sultanas or dates.
I could reunite you
with the origins of tree signs,
latin and common,
botanical names,
the types of cloud that lace the skies
and you,
you can cover me in the identifications of birds,
I've never known how to name what I've heard
but would know
the sound of a 'v' of geese
long before they'd measured
the river's breadth.
You can watch the sun
set and I'll savour flecks of it
left in the basins of my irises,
turns them more acid green,
turns them more light,
and when the sky deflects,
dresses herself black,
beckons to bed,
I'll go on further,
all by myself,
speak well of the hedgehogs,
make a burrow a home.
You could visit sometimes,
I'll leave a bell on a string.
Inspired by Andrea Gibson.
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