Hesp Poem: Ephemeral River

Look… I’m no poet. I am first and foremost a newspaper writer. That’s long way from poetry.

But what wiv the lockdowns and the endlessness of rapidly passing days, I thought I had better give the old poetry a go. You know… poor old chap getting older and more thoughtful and profound and all that.

Trouble is, it’s probably hopeless stuff. I don’t know. I feel a lot more confident about the unpublishable prose I write.

Anyway, I enjoyed writing two poems which I shall put up here - whether any of the 10,000 regular unique users will read them or listen to me drawling on, I know not.

But it’s my site, so I say WTF…

In which light, here is my little poem called Ephemeral River and based on a small but rather lovely temporary stream which burbles half a mile from the cottage where I live. For 10 months a year it simply doesn’t exist - but after very wet weather the sudden stream runs about 500 metres down a grassy bed in a hidden field. There’s something about it’s transient - here-today-gone-tomorrow nature that appeals to me…

EPHEMERAL RIVER

Runnel flowing from nowhere, 

Springs from rut in grassy sward,

Vanishes in tuck of hidden field,

Double dose of ephemerality.

Urgent rush of clarity and light, 

Burn borne from nothing,

Stream swallowed sharp, sudden,

Styx-like heading underground.

Quiver of green,

A water-flexing force of life

Issues forth, flows west, 

Flows free from fox-hole fissure.

Part-time, 

here-one-day,

Gone-the-next, 

brook.

This surprise stream. 

Fleeting freshet.

A short-lived spate. 

Rare rivulet.

River bed of unidirectional grass.

Bends moulded by molehills.

Its waterfall, the ancient pass of plough.

Frog-spawn spew of toadless tumult.

Winding winterbourne from nowhere,

Calling the coniferous hiss, 

Of wind-sough pine-song.

A stream stung with sibilance. 

No fish flap in its flow.

No heron seek in its sluice.

This troutless beck, unbeckoned,

Bejewelled work of a wet winter.

Ox-bow-less, weirless, eddy-less,

This waterway beyond metaphor.

No river-of-life meaning,

Stream of serendipity - flow of fluke,

One slick of watery waywardness,

Unplanned child of a rainstorm.

Comes, goes, flows, vanishes

A runnel or rill of transience.

This brief brook of here and now.