Rain in the run-offs makes her fidget,
all these concrete mouths
where her river used to run.
She thinks it must all be gone,
the lock-keeper’s cottage, the towpath, the heron banked river.
“It’s still there. You don’t believe me? Come.”
Park the car in a tidiness,
the road clean curving
to the white washed walls of the lock keepers cottage.
“Not changed much then?”
Slow shakes her head.
She remembers the stink of cabbage
and the lock-keeper’s children scuttling out of sight.
Over the bridge then.
That sign; they must clean it with a J cloth,
to the playing field, the clubhouse,
new wood brazen
where the grass greens a warning....
The old girl pauses; “This was, this used to
She will not say.
Blackened stems of barley follow the path,
reed mace, fat crayon heads spilling kapok.
And she is standing very still,
watching the river.
Wider, slower, forgetful.
The far bank looks just the same.
Trees massed, tall as she remembers,
up to the skyline
that is the skyline, surely, that she remembers.
Her river then,
heron banked.
Slower, wider, forgetful.
And the little paths have gone.
Her eyes sharpen on small things missing.
All those black holes, semi secret paths;
small lives absent on the river’s edge.
Old girl stirs and stamps her feet.
“No water voles. Fish stocked.”
Angry steps towards the car.
Will not look at the defeated river picture.
Back along the barley path, clay lumped,
past the too green grass
where she slows and smiles, just a little,
to go past the brazen club house,
that her river has made them build,
on stilts.
© Rosie Garner
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