Poem of the Week: Thames by John Challis | Poetry
Thames
After a day spent guarding the tugs and barges for garbage disposal,
racing sailboats, showboats and commuter mowers afloat,
the Thames turns inward to find a space
to stretch out in, in a space no bigger than him,
and digs in mud and clay
where every London crosses, to put its nose under the grave,
then flip the past like a coin to send it afloat
his drowned goods: Anglo-Saxon ornaments,
unexploded payloads, diced bones and oyster shells,
wedding rings and license plates, and all those
you might have been if your time had started early:
gravediggers, mound boys, mole men and cockle pickers,
farmers and gong merchants, resurrectionists
and suicides; the taken, the lost, the given –
then settles down to dream again of all its nascent streams,
the estuaries and tributaries that brought it here,
among the rusty hulls of the years, where there is no space
breathe or fall asleep.