A Thames Odyssey

Wise old Thames, river of my birth,
Let the joys and miseries of this life
Dissolve in you,
Your muddy flow holy as the Ganges...
Under an ash tree in a field in the West,
Outside the village of Kemble,
You may see,if it pleases, a bubbling
Among the stones,
Water clear and spontaneous as the truth.
(Isis,sister-wife of my soul,
Practise your magic with abandon
And guide me through the dark).
A songthrush hidden in the thicket,
Calls the season to attention,
As the water molecules,magnetized
And commandeered,start to haul
And surge ahead,bullshouldering
Towards the far fantastic sea.

Winter-blanched,I head across fields
Through river mist,to the silhouette
Of St John the Baptist’s church
At Inglesham,medieval farmer’s work
Still traced in the furrows,-
The sweat of our forbears
Through short lives of poverty,
Toil and war,enslaved to whim,-
The Saxon stones mortared
With memory,storied with lives.

These bridges over the Thames
That I cross and re-cross,making
Stitches in time to save nine,
Through beloved detested England,
As I fasten on the heart like an icicle
Swirling with rainbows,
An Anglo-Saxon riddle, curt as death.

Water-horse on a bridle path
Of words,I breathe the elderflower
And dog rose,the sweet briar’s pink,
As the world hovers like a dragonfly,
Perfectly made for its purpose.
At Iffley lock,seeing the lock-keeper
Calmly happily doing his duty,
Stewarding the river with love,
As many men before had done,
I know there can be simple joy
Here,on earth,beyond the frustrations
And sophistries of will and mind.

Hither-and-thithering martins
Skitter about the air,never resting,
And on the Sinodun Hills,looking
Down across country,feeling the clash
Of tribes,the march of cultures,
The geology of the human heart,
I wonder like an Atrebate,
Watching a Roman city rise below.

Skylarks firework over Runnymede,
Bursting from the grass,the earth
Of England,with all its glories
And faults,-freedom!the inner law
That guides us on right paths....-
At the Air Force Memorial,
Reading the stone names of the dead,
Souls that fell from the skies
In the time of tribulation,
How can I not feel my smallness
And cowardice,a life half-wasted,
Given over to selfishness and shame?

Hampton Court Gardens open to me
A demi-paradise by the river,
Nature curbed and channelled,
Where intrigue and statecraft
Have wrestled the angel down;
So have I navigated,taking
Pagan vows in a Christian land.

On Tower Bridge, staring into the Pool
Of London, I think of the crocodile
Brought back from the Crusades
By Richard the Lionheart,
Which escaped into the Thames here,
Never to be seen again,
A British dragon taking flight.
Majestic London,we are one blood,
Brothers in this battle,life!

In the estuary, at Cliffe, a wreck
Lies in the black mud,
Abandoned for decades,
And cormorants stand in a line
On the jetty,immobile.
This is the exit,but not the end;
The hospitality of the dead
Is extended to all,without stint.
From my crumbling body
The language escapes,survives,
The code I have loved since birth,
Seduced by its roots and secrets,
Breathing its mystical sounds.