Well

It was a barracks of an old house, the upper stories

well on the way to ruin, the lower a little way behind.

The eighteenth century kitchen flagged and dim;

its only light, through a small grimy window,

fell grey and listless onto the floor. When the back door

was open, a small out-house threatened to tumble in.

Outside, a cobbled yard that backed onto a wood of beech

and oak; itself threatened by briars and nettles; home to one

item of modernity, Tom’s black bicycle, leaning against the wall

with the air of just having come from or be about to go to town

for groceries, chops, tobacco; and opposite it, amidst encroaching

greenery, the well.

How to describe the magic of the well in that tumble-down yard:

its decrepit wall cracked and mossy, hemp rope with bucket hanging

down, dim distant eye forever staring. The lowering of the bucket,

clanking as it went, a faraway splash and clear cold water recovered,

as though we’d lifted it from legend, from depths that were unfathomed,

from the jaws of monsters no one would dare to imagine.