Bollards of cast iron help us understand
the plans of the top hatted ambition
which commissioned their casting
These rusting canal side corrugations
tell us something different,
about a later generation of trade.
I see another story in the asbestos roofs
and rotting timber of more recent trading structures:
old brick, new brick, cladding,
Materials which speak of their decade.
These icons of canal economy show decay
is not linked to age. Flat. Almost in two dimensions,
the slow movement of past barges is almost as clear
in the mind as the vessels of today.
Across two fields that divide the waters,
I’m bathing in bouncing reflections of sunset.
The huge sky compresses the rippled black currant
into the green and brown of a littoral pathway.
Shadow fingers flit across cattle pasture
and the warmth of the sun is overwhelmed
by biting, noisy north wind
bringing both chill and the sound of a train on an unseen track.
Charcoal half sky cohabits with the clear blue of an alpine postcard
Through the same long winter clumps I tread
as walkers in tweed who followed the river’s winding,
and Saxons and Romans and the striders of before.