as a child, they could not keep me from wells
and old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
i loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
one, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
i savoured the rich crash when a bucket
plummeted down at the end of a rope.
so deep you saw no reflection in it.
a shallow one under a dry stone ditch
fructified like any aquarium.
when you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
a white face hovered over the bottom.
others had echoes, gave back your own call
with a clean new music in it. and one
was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
to stare, big-eyed narcissus, into some spring
is beneath all adult dignity. i rhyme
to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
seamus heaney
all paintings by andrew wyeth
