ReturningWritten in the Tanat Valley |
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Walking beside a Welsh river
a flash of dark caught my sight It could have been a kingfisher but I saw no streak of blue It could have been a wagtail but its flight was to direct Perhaps it was the elusive dipper that I had hunted many summers On Dartmoor, as a boy we had sought it down the rocky streams In Northumberland I thought I glimpsed it once upstream, a brown shape on a distant rock And many times rivers looked perfect habitats in these wild and distant hills But never once had I been sure although I returned the same way many times Peering through bushes I had seen no sight scanning fast water, I could see nothing. We wandered on, over the grassy bank And wandered back returning the same way, once again And a flash I stooped and scanned A brown shape huddled on the water and turning, the white breast, shining. I had returned, without expectation and suddenly the dipper had shown himself to me True, he is no rarity no tick in a twitchers notebook But I had returned returned once more And returning, returning, returning had found my heart's desire. |