Shady Pool on the Greta
A poem in response to John Sell Cotman's painting. 'Shady pool by the river Greta'
Shady Pool on the Greta
This is no ordinary day, no normal water.
Enchanted into stillness, no rough hand
disturbs the quiet. There the white clouds stand,
unshifting in an eye no I can alter.
The grainy paper hides beneath the wash.
The hard shapes of the shore, the solid stones
translated by the painter’s moving brush
are mirrored in the pool with greener tones.
Your thoughts are held in darkness;
under the liquid there’s no stable ground –
only the thin reflective surface
in which no image of yourself is found.
A world is there, in that reflected tree.
You only have to look, and think, and see.
