Landlocked
Angela France
I can hear no water-voices where I live.
The susurrus of a calm sea is miles away
and the river’s splash and nibble
against the bank where I sometimes played
doesn’t pass through this town.
There’s no brook to chatter beside me
where I walk, only a still dew-pond
which dries to a grassy dip and fills
to a mirror where tips of grass-leaves
wave through the water’s edge.
The garden is cushioned underfoot
with moss. By the roadside,
the verges sprout dandelions and daisies.
The land knows the water runs beneath,
out of earshot, talking to itself.
Angela France is a Gloucestershire poet who has had poems published in many of the leading journals and has been anthologised a number of times. Her fifth collection, Terminarchy, is due out July 2021 with Nine Arches Press. Angela teaches creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and in various community settings. She runs a reading series in Cheltenham, ‘Buzzwords’, when we are not in a pandemic.