mud-mounds glisten, softness surrendering
to shallow water’s imperceptible infiltration
within the shifting world of tidal exchanges.
Water slips, silent, deepening,
bubbles rise from submerging places
as if small creatures were emerging -
mud and air in intimate conversation.
Water seeps, creeps over lunar landscapes,
silently leaks, sneaks under wooden jetties,
a mud-bound world of weedy edges, ropes and fences.
Dinghies up-turned old boats tethered in this liminal land,
paint peeling, halyards tapping, tarpaulins flapping,
dirty hulls ripple-patterned.
Boats will float when waters rise,
but when the vagaries of temperature and tide
swell the river and take the land,
the river will have the upper hand.
Our ownership and human plans,
the little boats upon the grassy strand,
the places where we live and love and hope,
will pass into history, become photographs of the past.
The wheel is turning.
As the neutral fingers of the river
find their way through cracks and slip-ways
(for exploring is just water’s nature),
as she slithers over the margins,
then she’ll claim the walkways and the doorways,
breach the boundaries, join us in our houses.
Wherever she goes she brings the changes
we are hearing in the whispers
as her waters ebb and flow.
She is linked to all her sisters
who hold our future in their hands.
How they shape it, time will show.
Jan Armstrong
Photo by Thomas Somme via Unsplash