(for Steve, Liz, Paul, and Sue)

 

Seven days, six nights of following

a thread of water uphill – then chasing it

down again; of coaxing seventy feet of rigid steel

along sinuous contours;

of measuring water out in blocks

to lift or lower those twenty tons across them;

of flying its bulk over valleys

and concealing it beneath the ground.

 

Our craft was ponderous – handled like a cross

between a super-tanker

and a supermarket trolley in a bad mood –

response to the tiller so sluggish

it began to feel as if time moved with reluctance

within this narrow channel; forced to adopt

the pace of the seventeen-nineties,

we almost took root in our surroundings.

 

No longer divided into minutes,

days expanded; from different compass-points

we’d hear the same church-clock

chime all three quarters – then the hour –

and to leave the towpath to buy food

was to become a trespasser

in the more-frantic century beyond the hedge,

to which we’d ceased to belong

 

and which contrived to get out of step,

surprised us every time

by changing in ways it had no right to

between one excursion and the next.

We ached from winding paddles, straining

to move lock-gates and swing bridges,

manhandling our sulky lump

on to moorings hardly any longer than itself,

 

palms sore from gripping ropes

drawn taut by its determined momentum.

Yet we laughed frequently – was it something

we ate? – disconnected from everything

that happened anywhere else that week,

fallen prey to a wonderful insanity

which can make you believe

nothing else matters.  Or ever will again.

 

 

 

 

© John Godfrey 2008 reproduced by permission of the author