The Canal

I know I don't write enough prose and poetry here, and that was my intention.  I guess with all this success...(ha kidding)  No but really, I want to send off my best stuff to publishers in the rare chance it might get accepted - and I'm worried that they might do a search to see if it's online already, so that leaves me with stuff I don't like enough to send off and it isn't fair for me to post rubbish here.  What I can post is stuff that was published years ago!  So here's a poem published in a magazine in 2005.

The Canal 

Now the canal lies like a paraplegic

Visualising leaping and running

Imagining straining muscles stretched

The sluggish canal devoid of movement.

Parallel its litter-choked margins grooves on brick

Scarred by knotted rope plucking barges

Coal laden through the oily slip

Whilst movements tide zipped closed behind.

This is how the past had been for them

A rhythm of shouting men busy with work

Wet wood creaking in disapprobation

Knots strain vibration against the narrow walls.

Now it lies a trickle through estates

Left by a falling volume odiously polluted

Where untidy men with beards fish all day for nothing

Infrequently dredged for missing persons.

And a slightly linked picture, since one of my friends on 365 was suggesting I mix word and image more (you know who you are)  This is the Bridgewater Canal, with HDR processing.

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend.