Again

Again the rock is wet. Again no spring.
Sheltered under the ridge the fence post
leans where it always leans. Mud.
A buzzard mews, turns in the wind,
a faraway engine grumbles.

On the ewe-path worn to here,
close to the face of cold granular rock,
I trace the grain of a fracture with my finger.
It turns darker where it is damp,
runs along a seep line stained by lichen.
Water doesn’t make these fractures.
It finds them.

But I know what I want to find.
Not the famous springs. The other side,
where fewer people come. Unnamed,
they trickle downhill to the brook,
months between rain and what seeps out.
No one knows how full the hill is.

Standing at the fracture, there are only signs.
Wet rock, the must of old water,
fern growth at the seep line.
The ferns are green.
That could mean anything.

My hand feels cold as the rock again,
a drop of water runs down my wrist
from the rock or from the air,
I can’t tell.

You come back when you come back.
I know that now. I’ve always known it.

And this path knows my boots.

I look at the stones below.
Exposed, I’d forgotten how pale
they are when the spring fails.
I place my hand back on the rock.

Something at the lip of the fracture—a bead,
or the light shifting. I watch it.
It doesn’t move. It doesn’t go away.
I turn back, find the brook again
running on whatever came before.

Adam Cairns | Chair of Ledbury Poetry | MA in Writing Poetry from The Poetry School & Newcastle University | Substack – www.thecuttingroom.press | X @adamcairnspoet | Instagram @adamcairnspoet | Bluesky @adamcairnspoet.bsky.social