Simon P Walker

What is the river?

Not life but loss, erosion of a landscape

Laid down a hundred miles and years before,

Time revenging fragile forms their self importance.

Dark currents drown their secrets

Concealing within the writhing body precious memory,

Bereaving vain endeavour and fruitless hope.

Along its winding guts, the sense of losing grip,

The lapping rent of past from present,

Managing only to recover

Some old detritus, a bike or plastic crate

A fragment of demolished home

On the hinterland

Between now and nothingness.

This is the Rubicon

Around which we totter

Dabbling beaks and feet

In squabs and clamour

Titter and skitter

While time slips.

Retrieval is our only task

Briefly surfacing only to sink again

Once more telling our story in fragments.

The city sighs

And the old iron columns murmour
 
As the train rattles over to Mortlake.

Reality is not now but then,

As the light fails

And time takes back its loan.

Simon Walker
2002