We walk to a ruined corn mill on the river
Mole hills everywhere and I resist the urge to look
Children chattering
Sunlight warming my face
The water roaring through a squeeze in the limestone
Time offers us the gifts of Spring
A small white flash catches my eye
It is a piece of pottery
Sticking out of the dirt.
Not one for anything so new
I nearly disregard it
But then
A bridge
A cloud and a roof top
Appear as I rub the mud away
Step into this
Hermits and Taoist monks
Palaces of gold and red
Bridges, ornate and magical
Cold, crisp mountain air
For this is above that cloud
High, high into mountains
I hear the mountain birds and somewhere somehow my mind confuses this
With Aslan’s Country
Flashes of blues and streaming tail feathers
And sparkling streams
So high, there in the Utter East that
Nothing should be growing
Except Enlightenment
It is a small picture on the edge of a tea cup
Delicate and once,
Perhaps, for the wealthy and educated
To sip their tea as they oversaw
The miller at his work
The river roars,
Squeezed through the limestone gap
While the walls crumble and
The tea cup has shattered
And Time has moved on
Yet the bridge remains
Nwyfre 