By Patrick Johnston
Streams spring and rise
From rolling oolitic chalk hills
And flow past stockholds and hamlets
And villages
With names by Danes
And Saxons, side by side
And Foston Beck
Where the Danes built
And shored the banks
And crow trees grew
And giant trout take refuge
In the old mill pool
Where eels hide amongst the pots
In the sluice
Far from their Sargasso spawning
And the White Dyke
Was hewn and met the flow
And I never asked
Where you came from
Or where you were going
But life’s like that
I suppose
When you are young
