River Leadon

I wasn't looking

for anything, a grey-green

river doing what it does,

narrow footbridge, flaking handrail.

I caught a turn against the current,

not a stone, not the light, a flank —

it drove upstream.

That thing knew where it was going.

Gravel buried under what the fields

let go, clay and run-off —

this stretch looks ill, cattle-drink a paste

of mud and hoof-prints, that shape

in the murk, gone.

It must have returned by smell,

a chemistry of water learned

when barely thumb-long, carried

that memory into salt

for years. The water it remembers

is not this water —

a six-inch pipe in the bank

pours grey water from the fields above.

Never stops.

It came back to this —

the same bend, the same willows

cut hard, the stumps gone grey —

and the water, yes, the water, but not

what was promised.

I'm still standing here. The river doesn't care.

Upstream, past the bend where it’s hard

to follow, the water thins and gravel

shows for maybe a yard — clean stone, silt swept off.

It could be something working the bed the old way —

I don't know.

By the time I get there

water will have closed over it.

‍

Adam Cairns