Claire Everett

The Crossing Point
Ulshaw Bridge, North Yorkshire

By chance I learn, coincidentally, we passed this way a year ago this very day. The wheel turns, we know it from its spokes – the seasons – and their betwixt and between. Late summer now, as we stand in a refuge above the cutwater, with the castle to the west and the abbey in the east, both lost to green. Here, at what was the ancient crossing point where a Roman road met the river, many a footsore soldier will have stopped to quench his thirst, then stripped to the skin to wash away the dust.

in silvered shallows
idling trout add their O's
to the ripples . . .
on the bridge, a sundial
with its gnomon long gone