Meadowland, woods and fields stretch away from the canal, while the towpath where we used to walk together unfurls miles of sky, uncrowded by buildings.

My legs pace off tick-tocked hours, past church clock and bells into the seasons’ timelessness. A slowworm snakes and sparkles in warm sunshine – silk-stitching a pause in the dust-dry mud, then gone.

A startled heron darts from swaying reeds to silvered clouds. I gaze up after but find nothing of you until I look again at the water, where a bluetit flits through grass needles, threading onwards.

Later, a fox laps up dusk’s dark wetness free of earthy reflections. I walk alone yet hand in hand with you and a younger me. Watching, my mouth is a bindweed flower in white-petalled gasp; my heart’s mass rests in one expanding breath.

breeze riffles through reeds 
sun ripples water, ghost selves 
rebound into flight