Category: fire and water

This river sits sluggish in its bed,

as if cold was thickening its water;

autumn colours shine slick, oily on

its slow surface as I stoop to find

my reflection in its empty soul.

And there is nothing; nothing but vast

emptiness, nothing but the broken

spirit of a land, this land, misused.

Coming home feels like turning away,

feels like the dry riverbed, silted,

tangled in dying weed, barren mud.

Coming home is leaving life and love

on far shores, with no sense of purpose;

no reason to rise with the sun, or

honour the late fire, no reason to

haul breath from the wild wind, nor to sing

love songs into a curious mist.

Coming home is lacking the essence

of home, as the river lacks water.

The coming home is without you

and yet without you is not home.

Time traveller, I lay with my feet in the past,

suspended among fragmented Roman columns;

surrounded by tangible history, paused in

the strange atmosphere of celebrity water

lapping warmly about my neck; contemplating

the cotton castle. Pamukkale, bright shining

in the sunny Maeander valley with my thoughts

overlapping the possibilities of time

layered in travertines; of time strewn in the fields,

the streams; a past and present warm in the water,

timelessly close in the geography of the

land, in the legacy of its people. And the future

waiting remorselessly beyond the reach of tomorrow.

Cola, birra, fanta, sprite. Sound waves, voice waves;

footprints in the sand, the repetitive chant to sell

refreshment: cola, birra, fanta, sprite, washes slowly

toward me, and away, east to west, west to east

as the water in giant, lazy waves rocks its own music

Warm, gentle, playful cousin of the destructive tsunami

as the child selling canned drink might be related to

the man departing the scene of the litter-bin bomb.

Sun beats down on us all, sand and skin burn.

Cola, birra, fanta, sprite.

Water seeks homogeneity.

People?

Walking the edge of the Eastern Cataract

was my goal and my sole expectation; yet

arrived on the island I was confronted

by Winston’s: And now Madam? But you must swim!

Perplexed by my lack of camera, my still

satisfaction with journey and achievement:

the arriving; Winston was attempting to

inject some proper European spirit

into my day. But the Devil’s Pool, even

with this low, low water, was no attraction.

The contraction of tiny muscles somewhere

in my gut, warned against swimming on the edge,

the precipice, of the Smoke that Thunders,

I was content to share N’shima, almost

cooked in Zambezi water over a low

campfire; quenelles shaped in the palms of the hand

held there in a comforting moment; assessed

by Winston’s young nephews, given the nod

and the quite irrefusable offer

of a river ride, right there, right then

in their tiny, leaky canoe.

In the absence of rivers there are deserts;

without water. The dry sharp of silica

bites into my flesh, crawls under my eyelids

reminders of mortality; without rivers.

Without structure, I look to the fire, blind;

without the current, the tide, the ebb and flow

I disintegrate. Become shard, become glass;

heartless with longing and no longer gentle.

Without rivers I am face to face without;

the unthinkable without. Cròssing the bridge,

invisible. Lost somewhere inside the fire.

Living in a right-angled triangle,

unusable where the roof touched the ground,

and cold where the air rises double height.

Clear plastic polygons, like insect eyes,

protrude; temporary conservatory

of cheap umbrellas. Might keep off some rain.

And the bridge over troubled person, stretches

out over the water, over the homeless,

the man with the fold-up life, the river

lapping beneath the concrete base where he

unfurls the sleeping bag, the umbrellas

the choice, or simply the lack of options.

Sumida is where the river burns

with heart-fire; alive with Kami

that by-pass the reasoning mind

for direct access to heart strings;

to the illogic that illuminates

and nurtures lost humanity,

lurking in defiance, lurking

in the dinosaur brain still hiding

it’s treasure from homo techiens;

surviving in the river, the forest,

the breath of deer at dawn; surviving

the illearth destruction

and the holocaust of greed.

Iron on iron wails torments of agony

while concrete shudders in mindless sympathy.

Age lurks, devoid of memory as youth

like ants, crawl over its history, careless

of its tomorrows. Selling their souls

for a jug of Pimms and a plastic chair

here on the festival terrace; here

hovering over the corruption of water;

the lifeless spoil of Thames water.

The day begins to boil over; the pseudo people

from the afternoon begin to blend. Zebra pants

and green hair on a muscle-bound 20 something.

The cardigan clad floaty skirt, sequins and pink quiff

in a grey-white bob adds glamour to the sockless

suits on sober youths. Chaps in ponytails

and tiny beards begin to outnumber

saris and ethnic hair. Noise levels build

until air bubbles thumbs in the thick

atmospheric-stew, overflows shouting,

shouting voices. Air and water equally corrupt.

Orange peach mist lingers over the water

as the rising sun bleaches unbearable whiteness

into the blue, into the contrails of the

international traveller, the training airmen,

attracting the parallel lines – a fire magnet –

even as earth inches its way outwards, warming

and cooling, defying the earth child’s newly acquired

need to predict, to model and to compute.

Defying with peachy, fuzzy-warm facts in space loads,

overloads; the thumbprints of god multiplying

like Mandelbrot minnows in the shallow orange river

as the earth child is drawn, lured: onward, outward, inward;

discovering itself, like light: either, or and both.