i saw the thames the other day
rather the isis, unusually this way
she was swollen
frothing and boiling and bloody and taken
and i am back here now, when i hold my pen
no choice for this now and then
so i stand here and think of the meadow upstream
surely now folded under season's seam
now home for the winter
for teal and goosander
i wonder where they started their flight,
that they call this respite?
and where is the kingfisher now?
her sandbank surely filled, pillaged, and fallen down?
but despite this cold
the pull is retold
some chemical reaction
by mutual action
there is something, in this supranatural steam
arising from this no longer stream
who reach out to touch me
and it is that you want to hold me, i dream
i imagine
but perhaps i am like this bottle, just fallen in
carried to that weir downstream
the drowning machine
how can it be the same river
that caressed me in summer?
and i know that you are not this river
but i see you in her
whether limpid or roiling
sing sweet or silting
to me
of honey
what shines under surface
to me is now porous
but only by words, and i stand here,
for you, i am here,
inspired inspiring impressions,
if only by telegraph and mirrors, your luminescence
but i know you dream in extremis
do you struggle to be with?
is pleasure, for you, like fire,
or empire?
is to be in to be drowning?
is to be held to be floundering?
and what is this, anyway,
am i stupid, being carried away?
are we like isis in winter
boiling asunder?
or can we be by the bank here
and peer in together?