Between two bridges

Once we sang this river

school-proud of our wee town,

bussed in boisterously over the Bottle Bridge,

– named for the flask fitted in its foonds –

or footing the flow on the Swing Bridge

travellers in space, above

winter torrent, spring flux.

Teachers taught the river:

had us first-finding on spring sides,

or scouring for stones:

 jasper

          and

carnelian

rattle their reminders down the keepsake years.

We doggy-paddled in pants at Laundry Corner,

white skin dripping, squealing at eel slithers against our legs

as the weeds waved us by.

The water is messenger to the trees.

Like alder seeds, buoyed by cork and air,

We were taken by the river too.

Hazel pedals home for lunch, gold hair flying,

skidding the gravel chips down the bridge ramp and back, catching her breath at it.

My dad swam for a dram, laughs Kate, across the river to George’s house.  

Then it flooded the fields to our house and we were dumb with its power.

Heady under the dripping-dropping lime trees.

Fee’s mind boy-drifts

while her father fashioned kayaks for the scouts.

Lesley, alone,

parks her pink bike

by the pebbled out-pipe

swats the surface with her fishing net.  

I brave the ford with a hundred bigger riders

letting the bay mare

flanks and dam us downstream.

The river courses on, past this middle-pause 

to marry the sea

while the fish force home through the flood.

The swing bridge has been bolted and boosted, safer now.  

But we remember our swaying crossings,

lightly suspended.