Ramparts Poem by Giles Watson

How many miles of mist-shrouded ramparts
Have I walked, soaked to the knees in dew,
With the solitary crow ever sentinel
Ahead of me on a bare branch, the vale below
Invisible, or emerging in puddles of light
As though the clouds were melting ice -
And I have melted too - melded with chalk,
Gone eye-high to grasses, become a thistle,
A path, a thorn, moulded myself to contours
Blurred by stubble, learned the slow and
Glacial art of undulations, condensed
Life, love and sense into an urchin test
As the crow has gazed, surveyed with his
Wise black eye, evaporated into flight?