Just this by Glyn Hughes

2002

Just this. My grandson and I
(he’s three) go down to the brook
to cook tinned beans on a camper’s fire.
So still an autumn day,
each ribbon of brook song is disentangled.
Broken summer’s fallen in harebells’ blue.
The umbelliferous flowers,
hogwood and late meadowsweet arch over his sky.

Yet something for which there are no words has entered in.
Something of which one day we will speak
(Thomas, do you remember when?)
perhaps late at night around a different fire.

So there it is. Just that.
And never again will throwing stones into a stream
be the happiest use of time.
Except when you too are a father, a grandfather.