Colin Simms
BB
Three horse-carts called at Scotswood
and a lined-wagon to be hitched on at Blaydon
Station every early-morning through the season
to carry each day and night catches of salmon
and “some days these were not enough”
year after year throughout Bunting’s boyhood
watching (“by ten lads in the pits or were fishermen”)
Sucks through his teeth, his cheeks bulging,
Tarset’s dark hard sharp little damsons
(my notion of dessert after our leistered salmon)
sucks at fingers “write it down now then”, urging
with chuckles, for we write for that appreciation
this fish, luxury for us, then so easy, abundant;
the lesser parts abandoned by otter and urchin ...
Even when he came to live at ‘Shadingfield’
few salmon then, and almost as if forgotten
and there’d been few houses there then, even;
now the housing-estates overlap old South Wylam
cluster the riverside, business - and university men -
have made it a suburb. “I wouldn’t go again,
even if they build here on every fell and field.”
Page(s) 88
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