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