I am getting to know the River Severn. A longish poem about it is already up among the “collected works” on the right (“Of My Neighbour the Severn”)
Here below are some later brief impressions, or experiences, of the Severn’s nature.
The picture above was taken by Nicola Knoop.
And I did a silly thing
(at Arlingham)
And I did a silly thing
and I’m ashamed of it now
I carried my son across the river
where the ford used to be
but I got it wrong
and crossed a few yards
too far down and suddenly
felt nothing underfoot no
passage and the water
pulled at us with shocking force
but I found my way
out of our trouble
by swimming like crazy
and so I hauled us
onto the far bank, blowing hard.
And this old man was sitting
right there on a bench
and he’d been watching us
and he pointed at the church close by
and said : that graveyard there
is full of silly buggers like you.
The poem above is an approximate record of a story told me by the swimmer, elderly now.
The Severn Bore
near Framilode
Sometimes the Severn shakes itself like a hound
to cast off that mud, those millenia,
those furies pent, but we see only
the wrinkles along its back
escape and race at speed towards Gloucester
pursued by excited surfers and photographers
and the occasional poet, with crowds roaring
along its bank, until at last
the whole arrangement settles back in place again
and the sea-gulls relax and resume their squabbles
and the currents and cross-currents return
to their accustomed turmoils and all the arguments
we know so well continue where they left off.
The Ravening Flood
near Aust
My picture of rivers is Wind
In the Willows, the Itchen through Winchester,
the Test through Stockbridge – all clarity,
gurgle and fishing rights. My kind of river
penetrates the Hampshire style of countryside,
twinkling politely as it goes. Saint Cross ,
for example – good for picnics. The swans there agree.
Enjoy your sandwiches, they say. We’ll pose for you
among the reeds. The Severn has never learned
polite, only powerful, disordered,
multiple and muddy, and when the time
comes to become Atlantic, it surges
into the grey salt water like a ravening flood
arriving home.
Rogan Wolf