Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

He asked her to go into the wood and tell him what she saw there.
She walked between the trees and the first thing she liked was the
                                                                                          pond.
She knelt down and stripped off the thin film of reflections,
rolled it up and put it into her pocket to show she had been there.
The water's new skin reflected with more brilliance and better
                                                                                         colour.
So she knelt down and took this new skin and put it into her pocket 
throwing the other skin away.
But the colours of the newest skin were without equal so she took
this instead.
In due time she emptied the pond in this manner.
All that was left as a slippery hole, a sloppy quag with a few fish
                                                                                       skipping.
She felt sorry for the fish so she went down into the quag and
                                                                                       captured
them in her skirt and climbed out.
Then she looked for where the torn scraps of reflection had settled
among the undergrowth and she slid a fish into each one.
After she had done this she went back to him. "What are those stains on your skirt?" were his first words...
But his suspicions were drowned in amazement as she unrolled the
                                                                                          tapestry
of reflections for him.