A causeway is out by the high bridge,
if you route through Lacock stream
where dogs wade and waddle and 
see left and right those cottage shops
that are selling absent and honestly the
garden finds at one pound a pot. Drop it
through the letterbox, will you

and on your way to that bridge, 
that fords a willowy beach on both
banks, you can if you so wish, send a twig
through, run twixt and see who wins it.
The wall top is curvy smooth from all
the bum breaches, tourist seatings,
rub rub rub. Sometimes the water

goes so fast, and hoes so deep
that all the river leeks and plantation
weeds that live half in river sleep
the whole year long all lean downwind,
nick the twig a bridge-width in no time.
And that causeway! Sometimes horses nearby whine 
in memory of marvellous Maud Heath.

—

There are old menfolk and women seams
who are alive so long a-while that when
they think of kids, being them in their
eyes, full of rheum, they see visits
past old Maud’s posts, the markers for 
Bremhill or the Dumbpost, now that’s an inn
that will warm your market toes.

You must be weary, but still, kids,
we need some under-ration
eggs-more to provide a sneaky pudding,
maybe spotted dick or something suet
do you like that kids? Aye we do,
you all go, and play on bridges
in the miles it takes to,

the miles it takes to bring. 
The milestones are diamond-shape heads, 
stout and still there, after god knows 
how many trucks and carts and ships
over a hundred-weight years or so.
So many weathers to fill the ditch
back when backroads were the main thing.

—

Isn’t it lucky I made it rich? Maud quips
on this stretch, which with a kink in history
could be the M66. But now is only
thrown twigs by countrying kids
not needed to carry things.
From Wick Hill, where on pillar 
like a greek sits modestly high 

a stone mix of her and the sculptor’s eye, 
to Chippenham Clift, where we presume 
the market was at which she loaded out
her legacy things, eggs mainly,
so the stone pillar says in english, 
not in greek. And up the Heath went, 
raise up and treat the traipsers feet

to a ritzy view, above the whining
horse’s ears, and impervious to even
the severest attempt of the Avon to
flood above its own plain and willowy
knees. Childless she, so sixty-four arches 
in Maud’s will, and in a certain light  
her causeway is a sunken Manchester mill.