Hear factories, industrial,
when millstreams powered large machines,
noise travelled, spreading quickly, loud.
Did trout or salmon, channel, course,
or even coarser fishes there
sense spinning tales from waterwheel
through flicking tail, a fin or gills?
By gobbled worms and larvae laid,
detritus lying on the bed;
’mongst pebbledash and layered sand,
in crumpled sheets like widow’s weeds,
which tastes like gossip, pillow talk
in rising bubbles drowned in speech.
I heard them say, those river sprites,
like rainbows in the rumour mill,
without wait, using fishy scales,
the weight of evidence suggests,
and heard it from authorities,
reliable, so reel it in –
no better than she should be line.
A hook too popular by far.
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Poetry Potion. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com