Severn minnows
In the sun's strobe their quick silver
looks random as spilt nails,
yet each moves with acute control;
never touching, however curt
the space between.
They were the totems, devout toys
of my Shropshire childhood:
ambushed in pouncy nets and jars
they gleamed, spiralled its open rooms,
its radiant sills.
'They won't keep, you know,' said grownups.
I used to try, four days -
but could never win, before time
unforgivably some white gut
would surface, stop.
They were here when the troop trains went
- shoals flashing bayonets -
when the spare, khaki ghosts came back,
in and out of their smashed, wet skulls
like loose shrapnel.
They are here now, in the Bren's brisk
tock from Copthorne Barracks
-sound of a butcher chopping meat -
with no swans, only a river
lead-ripped, sad.
Page(s) 20
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