Fluid

FLUID

The riverside

manor we reached by a wet morning's ride.

They lent us towels as we went inside.

The moistened scene 

of 50s children's stories that had been

more in Clare's childhood than mine, the dark green

leaves sheltering 

our locked bikes from the low sky watering

July, most of the trip, even that thing

when the day cleared

briefly, the undrained bike path by a weird

reflection momentarily appeared

swimmer-deep under-sun waterway-blue;

not bike then but canal boat or canoe.

'Fluid' was written in response to a prompt in Jo Bell's book 52: write a poem a week.Start now.  Keep going (Rugby: Nine Arches Press, 2015); the prompt in question was to write a poem about water.

The riverside manor is the old house at Hemingford Grey that was the setting for Lucy Boston's book The children of Green Knowe.  The undrained bike path is the bridleway alongside Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, and the visit is one that wife Clare and I paid to Hemingford Manor by that route in July 2011.

I posted 'Fluid' to the Places of Poetry map in October 2019.  Places of Poetry I strongly recommend to passengers or walkers who are finding a long journey tedious.  Look on PofP and see what poems have been inspired by places you pass through!