Today I explored the early autumn lanes
The trees had not really turned
Even though the ninth month
Was nearing its inevitable end
I sat on a rough wooden bench
Which had views distant
Towards the darkening sea
The spruce and limber yellow-hammer
In the dawn of spring and sultry summer
In hedge or tree the hours beguiling
With notes as of one who brass is filing
This was a fragment of a poem
Penned by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I found it in a book of his poetry
That I kept in a worn knapsack
Having purchased it from a redundant church
On a hot summers day now since lost
Need life be empty I asked myself
As I navigated a hidden footpath
Lost in a freshly ploughed field
Life is never empty that is quite obvious to me
Indeed it is very full almost to overflowing
I could stand here and let the winter winds pass
And still witness the fresh beauty of what surrounds me
A short poem has been left in a bus shelter
between Sandwich and Deal every year since 1983
these poems are normally found in late September
and to date the poet has remained anonymous