Seven Steps
but the stream itself is in full spate
Dennis O’Driscoll
The first stepping stone is nearest the house
Preparing the second, I discovered roots, and an immovable erratic
The third stone rocked, rocked
On the underside of the fourth, I signed my name, spoke a few words
At the fifth stepping stone, I hit (then quickly dismissed) an electric cable
By the sixth, the pond was in sight, and the path’s curvature
Past last year’s bonfire, through hawthorn, elder and sunset
I laid the seventh
No use for an eighth stepping stone
so I leant it with some broken slates where the privy had once been
John Greening’s latest Carcanet collection is To the War Poets and a collaboration with Penelope Shuttle, Heath, appears from Nine Arches this June. His OUP edition of Edmund Blunden came out in 2015. He is RLF Writing Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. His website is www.johngreening.co.uk