In the Mirror Copyright © Rob Lock 2010

Terrain that's largely left uncultivated -
little done but sluicing down, and sometimes
thicket trimming, undertaken carefully,
maintaining sunny aspects into autumn
and beyond, though desiccation has begun.

How soon the winter colours dominate
as red and gold give way to white
and shadowed tracks, approaching symmetry
but leading nowhere in particular,
spin out - remains of long forgotten story lines.

It speaks, like any landscape, of times past,
responds to changes in the weather;
has much in common with ancestral scenes.
Strangely, the owner thinks he has it all
in hand, mapped out, that he controls the plot

but look, Narcissus traps - marbled, blue -
depth indeterminate, impassable as glass.
What metaphysical conceit might not
lie here, in need of drawing out, of pinning
down, to get the lord of this land grounded.