This week, three poems all inspired by the same location - the aqueduct at Garstang where the Lancaster Canal passes over the River Wyre. Compare, contrast, but - most importantly - enjoy.
Aqueduct
It’s not in watercourses’ nature, crossing one another
so Rennie pulled a rope of water taut, to let the Wyre
glide beneath and wriggle down to greet the sea.
And, if he hadn’t, the canal perhaps would form a dam
backed up with centuries of rain to make the plain
a lake enough for the moon to take a midnight swim in.
Norman
Hadley
Titan
Mighty titan hewn from stone,
feet planted solid on each bank.
Salt stalactites, cold knives hung from his belly.
Twelve wooden steps curve upwards round his form,
Inviting to ascend to shoulder height.
A purr of diesel power
confuses human senses.
The giant sputters in his sleep?
Stretching into middle-distance,
straight and true,
along the titan’s outstretched arms
a mirage waterway appears.
Bobbing wooden barges
bright in primary hue,
mallards trailing in their wake.
The traveller peering from his collar
sees the river surging to the sea.
An Intersection for adventurers.
Inland my love or on to destiny?
Adele V Robinson
Crossflux
X
marks the spot
in
Garstang on Wyre,
where
water passes over water.
A rare enough feature
gives
cause to consider
how like
a drawing
by
MC Escher
[fittingly,
son of a civil engineer]
this
construct by which
artifice
mirrors nature
and
is reflected back therein;
not
a crossroads exactly,
more
a liquid geometry:
underflow
with overtow -
canal
atop and river below.
Steve Rowland
