LOCKDOWN SPRING

 LOCKDOWN SPRING

 My sister sends me unwritten  
 a picture postcard, post-war, colour,  
 The Source of the Thames. 
 A pool surrounded by pink stone  
 from which runs a rivulet.  
 Is this the onlie begetter  
 of Mother Isis, Father Thames?  
 She says we were taken there by ours  
 when she was three and remembers 
 or alleges she does. I was two  
 and have no memory, until  
 perhaps now this imprint. Maybe  
 it is the Type, of what I call The Pool  
 of Silence in my mind, the place between  
 the worlds where I can go & plunge in,  
 can bathe in the reincarnational 
 waters’ clarity.  But here, there’s more:  
 Railed off, as if for all the world it were  
 one of those self-important parish  
 graveyard tombs, is the reclining figure,  
 trident in hand, of the presiding god.  
 The flow of waters is wisely  
 protected from his management.  
 Even after threescore years and ten  
 not to be trusted with the innocent.  

                                            Andrew Robinson