A visit to Ruskin Mill
The old water-wheel no longer turns,
Axle rusted, mill-race moss-grown,
Where the dipper skips, stops stone-top to feed,
And paired grey wagtails bob,
Frenetic yellow flashes
Disappear among the fingered twigs
Of over-hanging beech and ash;
Long-chain ponds, flowstone linked,
Bridge-stitched,
Trees hung with rough-stone mobiles,
Lakes enriched by brushed steel sculpture -
Lily-pads pierce metal sheets,
Oak-carved falcons swoop and keen
By improbably located dolphins
Caught mid-leap, as,
Overhead, a heron, real, grey-feathered
Flaps languidly,
Peering deep to seek
Its scaly ray-finned prey,
Hanging near-motionless,
Safe ‘neath nets,
Along with coot and moorhen nests.
Small spring-shrines a-sparkle,
The urge to throw a sixpence in
(Remember them?) is strong;
Well-water wells up,
Bubbles and trickles,
All ockle-gockle-splish-splosh-splash
And undine-naiadly sacrosanct,
Filling pools lit copper sulphate blue,
Clear, near invisibly pure -
Beyond, see how the cottage-garden grows
(Biodynamic, planetary - planetary, biodynamic)
Sheds turf-roofed and robin-claimed,
Roundhouses - home to crafts,
Pole-lathes turning chair-legs in the rain,
Items of the bodger’s art,
Coppice-bundles lie by new-cut stools,
Potters’ presence told
By chimneyed kiln-smoke -
Fine forest-folk at work, at hearth,
Straying wisely far from normal paths;
Workshop-world,
Galleried and roundel-floored,
Phreatic bronzes evoke eddied currents,
Granitic knots and mazes
Draw the eye,
Bright-felted textile images -
Rams, ewes and lambs,
(This is a wool town)
Nuthatch, magpie, owl,
Bark-mounted creepers of the tree,
Driftwood painted, copper-nailed,
Brass-studded blocks,
Each spalted, hollowed, polished,
Some potent, pregnant,
Others static
‘Neath monochromatic beauties draped unclad
On branch and trunk in wooded scenes,
Limber skin on fissured timber,
(‘Sylvan’ might once have been the term),
Therapeutic art indeed -
The water-wheel no longer turns,
But much else does it seems.
