Swimming in the Welland

I am underwater, 
swimming against the current
effortlessly. I do not need to breathe.
Streams of silver-flecked minnows 
part and join beneath me. An eel zig-zags 
through slithering reeds. I know 
exactly where I am. I know these clumps
of river-weed, these bulrushes, 
this particular curve of the bank. 
This is my river: the half-mile stretch
between Deeping Locks and the Cross.
If I surface at this precise point, I'll hear
my sisters calling from hiding places
in the dock leaf jungle, my brother whistling
birdsong from his spot high up in the oak tree.
There'll be a faint whiff of wood-smoke
from the remains of a bonfire.


Look over the bank, past our garden 
and the house, beyond the street 
and Addys' Field, and you'll see
our bit of England: acre on acre 
of black soil - fenland once under the sea, 
scored now with grids of ditch and drain. 
You can see for miles, the flatness pricked
only by distant pylons and the points 
of limestone spires.


I duck behind the rowing boat and dive
through deep water, colder now, down
to the riverbed, emerald with slippery fern -
resurfacing in the still middle 
of a hot Texan night, four decades 
and five thousand miles away -
a buzz of quicksilver along the veins,
a faint catch of river-weed, 
a coolness to the skin.

 

 

(This poem appeared in Ambit 197 - 2009)