The stranger at the door, camera
round his neck, said, ‘I’m looking
for March.’ The men were lambing.
She offered him tea. She’d never thought
of the place as picturesque. Did he say
‘It’s ordinariness which is best’?
Anyhow, he didn’t miss out the washing
on the line, the stack of fallen slates.
He kept Whitey in, and even Whitey’s
hen-shaped shadow, and the roots,
the yew tree’s, they were there.
And the air, the flowing air
of that ordinary March day she now saw
as one of the best she’d known.
Without her free copy, the sunlight
would never have been downy,
the dozen doves so composed,
and the chimney smoke – wasn’t it
the old apple tree being burnt
that morning, the solid of it floating
into the atmosphere in wonder?
April through December she wouldn’t allow
the page to be turned, in case
she forgot the lesson she’d learned.