The last druid of the Mersey

As we eyed chemical mudflats in the ebbing tide

he emerged from the woodlands by the river,

slipping into our footsore rhythm of step,

a straggly, grey-haired and moustachioed giant

in an aged military-issue camouflage cape,

Irish wolfhound dancing around his sailor’s boots

he named the plants and trees to us,

reciting their uses, medicinal and arboreal,

delighted when I picked out a clump of hazel –

“Oh, so you also have the knowledge?”

He left us when we turned for the crossing,

fading into low sapling shadows at twilight,

a visitation or a landscape echo of when

a stranger’s soul was still weighed in words.