To the Waterfall
(for Ronald Ewart)

Walking again the track to the waterfall
Twenty years after, same heat, same smell,
Blown from late summer, and still

The sullen shade that shakes down from the trees:
Remembering this walk is not what it says
Now. It has become its memories:

Dogs scampering ahead, and children's voices,
And sudden laughter in high picnic places,
All shaken into far too many pieces.

But that is not it, either. All that air,
All those sounds and stones and leaves, nowhere
Except where they gather here —

Particular, different, not to be expressed
Distinctly, vague as the mist
Down in the valley below, a vast

Diffusion of each step we chose to take
Time and again, as those leaves unshook
Year after year, walking along that track.

Copyright © 2003 Anthony Thwaite All rights reserved
from A Move in the Weather
Enitharmon Press / Dufour Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission