Starlings burst trees with silhouettes and prattle.
Butterflies press to warmth on fence planks. Where the river ran over the
field crop strands hold in neat rows, like green hair on a cheap doll. Clouds
are big, the blue sky bigger. A brown deep churn of river rushes seaward. To
the bend where the fallen oak branch had taken the form of a dragon we run,
ungainly, over tussocks, splash puddled mud. The water looks flat. We stare for
the rise of snout, the plumed tail: and keep staring. The form is freed, we
know it: out of the fibrous wood somewhere under that flat wide water he has
found his limbs and turned seawards and our hearts fly after him and he was
ours, for one summer.
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