Deva

Once I saw a porpoise roll within you

another time the velvet of a seal

grey within grey.

Once I saw the silver flash of fish

on the part of you broken by the weir

and once the shadow of a shoal

And once, that street of fishermen's houses 

led down to their boats, their nets

where they took turn to take what they needed to feed themselves.

And once, it was my job to rob you too

- to take a part of you and shake it in a glass flask

 and extract your poisons and unwanted debris.

I saw then how heavy rain disturbed you and made you thrash your banks,

how a farmer's slurry or chemical spill would deaden you 

and how a long hot summer could stop you in your tracks.

The Old Palace

I should like to see inside this place
once bishop's home,
once palace,
once sumptuous hostel
for youths.

A chippendale balustrade,
a panelled room,
a plastered ceiling,
fireplaces, overmantles, two sets of stairs.

A printer hums,
a busy secretary processes words,
upstairs, with views of the nearby river,
the board members struggle to remember why they're here.

Riverside

Here, where felons used to prowl
wedge-shaped yards
then retreat to cells arranged along a
hexagonal wall,
a warden watched
from high on the hill
above an obligatory chapel.

I've heard there are still tunnels.
Dungeons
where the soon-to-be-convicted
are held
awaiting their call to court
and judgement.

The rest of this humming hive
was swept away
replaced, decades ago,
- after war and impoverishment -
with a nest of wasp-like workers,
chewing and manufacturing paper
with their spit.

And now it's this:
the shell left when that swarm
- long overgrown -
departed
leaving their former residence
for those that tend the young
and carry outsized eggs to safety
when disturbed with a spade.

River Walk

Just here
- where skinners stretched out skins
and manufactories once added
their own peculiar stench
- is now an artifice of trees
and genteel path
enclosing earlier ramparts.
Age within age.

The Giantess in waiting.

I heard that Ethelfleda built here first.
Mercian Princess.
Daughter of a king.
Bookish.  Learned.
A craving to leave her mark in something other than flesh*.

A wall, a ditch, a fortified town,
and then this piece of ground.
Hard,
Rounded now.
Enceinte.
Waiting in readiness
for Norman wood and Norman stone.

*After the birth of her daughter, Elfwyn, 'she declined incurring the the risk of again becoming a mother, declaring that the bringing forth of children didn't become a king's daughter'

A house called Nowhere

Maybe a declaration at the end of a walk
'the middle of nowhere'
Or a convenient name for a drinking den.
'going nowhere'
Or the inspiration for a song lyric
'Nowhere man'.

















Two houses and then one.
Out of sight from church and village.
The view to the front better than the one to the front.
Nowadays, perhaps, its inhabitants are eyeing the level of the river.
And like the rest of us watch it rise.
Coming from nowhere.

The Roof Plantation

Some plants are the adventurous sort.
You know the type.
The first to send out roots on wastelands,
the first to explore any newly-turned earth
or cooled volcanic ash.

And then there's this.

















Soil in the sky
with a favourable view
and built-in warmth.

A cushy colonisation, perhaps
for the self-indulgent explorer.

Stone Rainbow

A test of strength, I hear
a long wait,
a prototype

and then a further stroking of chins.

But then, at last, the bridge.

Opened by a monarch.
A wonder of its world.

Skyline

God, governance, utility.
Each jostle for dominance
on this hand of rock
above the bridge
close to the city.