Autumn in Clun

          You came: we saw: we heard:

                    — On a bench at Clun

A breeze disturbs leaves
which articulate what moves on
                                           and away

to be a premonition of change,
or remembered emotion,

so long ago
that you mistrust the memory.

And again —
its cool draft

on your skin like a ghost,
stirring the leaves with breath

which passes across your lips
in a sigh.

             So you wonder —
was this what they saw?

Out picking horse mushrooms
in a dewy lollop of grass,

or walking the dog
below the brim of woods:

did they see gold
move between elder leaves,

assume the form of a man
who walked along with them a way —

talking about the weather
in the decent way of country neighbours,

or seeming to listen
as if to echoes
                    in a wide vale of meaning —

then vanished?

The miraculous stone
waits at the curb,

a dressed ingot.
Here are the blue votive flowers,

the bench with its unremarkable view
of town and fields,

the everyday movement of light
across fields rising in parallels from the river —

gold, pink, grey —
Surely they're grave-cloths?