I felt you first,
in my shoulder.
Tight, in there,
like a gun.
I felt you,
In the cold.
Coming on
too strong.
I thought there’d be
more winters.
More time
to be young.
River
You came in like I hope to go out -
Not on your knees but fighting,
With lungs full of air.
I knew you immediately.
You couldn't best your mother,
Although you tried.
In the crimson pool,
she was magnificent.
Bringing you in.
Giving you life.
Giving us both more,
Than she ever had.
And then I held you.
Skin on skin.
Eyes on eyes.
A sudden and certain bond.
The Journey
A north wind blowing.
Its laboured, persistent breath,
Chasing out the dawn,
From the trusting, ancient wood.
I went on in half-light then,
With my precise companion.
The rain festooned the trees.
And every inch of land
Revealed itself to me.
Shedding its morning shroud.
Becoming more intimately known -
Surrendering to the charge.
Failing frames collapsed.
I turned my shoulder to the wheel.
The turf below was a pedal.
The earth below that, a gear.
Our footsteps in facsimile now,
To be remembered in the dirt.
On the broken, Roman path,
Cold metal pressed on flesh.
The loaded, aching springs,
Desperate to break free,
Remained tight and still.
In spite of everything.
The mist laid a town,
Three-hundred chimneys wide,
Out, like the last length
To ever fall from the loom,
And I stood over it, weeping.
Mourning its mechanical memory.
I trailed the river,
Down the slope of tumbling hills,
Through the drowning channels,
Carving careless in the earth.
That soft-rich water -
Seeping into life.
In the sodden valley
Headed by death’s door sheep.
I went on, to the foot
Of magnificent, ancient hill.
Entombed within it
Lay an unburdened secret.
I could have retreated,
Along the blind-brick causeway.
But I saw weak lamplight
In a high, dirty window.
Casting tortured shadows,
Across immaculate labour.
That reassuring returning dream,
Of old ways and old toil.
Of worn hands on worn metal.
Proving this place forever,
Seat and throne.
Castle and kingdom.
The Unforgiving River
I was thirty years old when the river found me.
I walked beside it, some miles every day
Every step closer to its edge and then barefoot in the shallows.
At thirty-three it rained for what felt like a month
And the river, in cruel and crushing spate,
Dragged me off the bank and pinned me to the bottom.
I turned over and over in the dark and struggled and swallowed.
Dashed on the stoney bottom beneath the unbearable weight of the water,
I believed I was dying. Perhaps I was.
Once the river has taken you under, its call is constant.
It calls and you are immediately journeying back there
River-bound through the molasses jungle on an infernal patrol.
You try to change direction,
To pull away and run home but there you stand, by the bank,
Naked and knee deep in its brackish edges.
Full of terror under the moonless sky,
Stepping deeper and deeper until your feet don’t feel the bottom
And your head tilts back and you are gone.
One day, you might escape the river.
When it slows in a turn you might grasp at the reeds and hold tight.
Some days they’ll give. Some days they’ll bear your weight
And you might haul your self up and catch your breath on the bank under the gentle sun.
You are resurrected, there, amongst the reeds and the long grass,
Feeling strong enough to start the long walk home
Through peaceful villages and friendly towns you used to know.
But then, one night at home, in the floorboard-creaking, dripping-tap darkness,
It calls again and out of the door and through the deserted streets
Uou return to the poison water.
At a fold in the river, under the burning canopy,
Where trailing branches dip below the surface,
When you are starving, rotten and wasted in the mist,
Look out for the boatman. He is death’s enemy.
He will cary you home and he will give you the cure.
The water is poison.
Every day it kills you.
Over and over again.
Every dam will fail.
Every bridge collapses.
The river is cold and cruel.
The river is long and black.
The river is unforgiving.
But the boatman will carry you home.
Meadowlands
Across the Blue Man's Bower Where a great house once stood By a dammed ochre stream Where my father and uncle swam In sixty-six or seven. Near the flooded field Navigated by red pontoons Where a horse would almost drown Forty years from then. I saw her, neck deep in water, Veiled below the surface, In the crook of the stream willow, Her tender feet disturbing silt. And over the Barfield, Where I first fired a gun And was myself missed By an errant, drifting shot - By just turning into the wind. In the wild hawthorn hedges, I heard the torment of the thrush And felt the nettle’s sudden sear On my young and wandering calf. I saw tortured, matted rushes Blinding the bank’s brisk edge, And the strange switchback bend Leading up to the quarry head, Left overgrown and overlooked. The long line of the gun, Its weight on my shoulder’s slope, And the rot-sweet scent of rain Stirred an inherited memory, Until now kept hidden. As I passed beneath the railway, Alongside the water works And saw white smoke rising From the Old Flatts furnace. I crossed the half-moon bridge, Over fine minnows and broad bullheads. I passed the rusted circle sluice That was terrifying to me then, And near a frigate-grey pylon, Humming in the damp, rigid air, I found the horse-shoe river - Stagnant and strangled, And cut off from its kin.
Up on the Hill and in Its Shadow Below
A quarrel, between grass and gorse, At the edge of an emaciated wood. What does the land know? A dead lake rising up on a wasted field. That pungent water, its surface suddenly broken. The scorched circle where a fire once licked. Torn clothes in the tree. A boot forgotten - Or abandoned in retreat. The earth there, stained with memory, Where deep roots go undisturbed. I saw a figure against the sky. A watcher on the crest of the earthen wave. He was there and gone again. A shepherd fearing for his flock? Or more likely fear itself, rational and cold. And I frightened a bird in the long grass. Out of the undertow it flew, alarmed. The gate I had taken led nowhere. Just more withering, wasting ways, to find myself lost on the hill. An old camp below the graves. Like Victorian stones, piled in. Half collapsed and all askew. Those broken, aching teeth, inside an open and waiting mouth. I won’t return to the hill. I have seen it all and sensed the dread. At a certain pitch, along a certain path, I have seen time collapse, Into the crumbling, hateful earth.