it's generally considered 'not done'

 to post poems on BritPo but considering a) the somnolence of the list and b) the sleeping capacity for snide remarks, a stimulant worthy of the names of both poetry and British, I thought I would do so. Pass the sherry to the right

Crossing the Mud, the Day Finds 

me walking on the line 
of a worn, smothered path 
through a brown muddy, 
mud-muddled, ridge and furrow 
field (‘rig’, I’m told, they say 
‘rig’ in the county) 

trying to follow 
someone shorter 
else’s steps, footsteps, 
the glue pull of slippage 
either side. By Smeeton 
(the Smith’s toun) 

Westerby (the West farm). 
Appreciate how hard it is to follow 
in someone else’s steps. The as they say 
to follow. To literally. 
No other gait goes 

quite the same, 
on the ancient path. Your stride 
has to bend and buckle, your ham-strings 
strain like balked wood, your eyes 
become transfixed, 
you lose 

all sense of track 
and where (in the field, 
the goo mud field) of what 
is above, beside, behind you, of where 
you are heading 

other than those prints, 
the small moist prints like mist, 
on the human way, 

writhen 
               the ever-writing map, 
across dumped ploughed centuries, 
the snake-track 
                             before you.