Walking with Dorothy Wordsworth

I go by way of a strike, by the cold accounting of a falling pound, by rented car wrong side of petrol-clogged roads. In another country, day by day provoking additions out of odd coins, I travel without a Guide, in its place a book my guess the one she asked Coleridge for. In Grasmere I make a third on the dirt path between them. We stop at a stile to check a line or read a poem through as if all at stake in the day's news is right rhythm for the mind to take over. A sudden burst of rain. We make a run for the church where we wait it out in peace, side to saints in their eastern sites of glass, an angel holding up the wood it was carved from to make a perfect roof. Our least word in the choir goes up: ``What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support.'' I am home now, the failed tourist, my souvenirs the clouds recovering their wandering illustrations in silverplated sunlight warmer than Celsius for it, and a bit of gorse, Dorothy, to keep my place with golden dust where the book does not quite close.