The poet closed her book
and led us Brodie-girls
in tense excitement
to walk out of school gates
to break the rules
and dive into the dark.
The castle ruin emerged ahead of us,
silhouetted like an ancient shipwreck
against the night sky,
the watery moon, hidden
by deep waves of black clouds,
created a menacing half-light,
as if seeing sunlight
from the depths of murky reeds
on beds of muddy waters.
We strode the Wiltshire turf
not waving, not drowning,
lost in the mists of the glass lake:
our youth a curtain
damming out the poet’s pain,
no thought of death,
the gentle friend.