[poem:] Brian Lewis: The Weir

A
Like hampton's Geordie worm that wraps
its tail round Penshaw Hill this river
holds to Yorkshire, wont let up: It entraps
the best we have flowing ideas. Shiva giver
destroyer returner the girls in Boticelli dance
in Primavera three women seen as one
in spring time all are here united by chance
flowing silk like water alone

B
Heve water overlaps itself and folds
on water, gauges at the bank and bites
above the mud into wet earth, penile it holds
to it for a second then withdraws clods come away grass fights
for survival but as each blade separates
from its cousin the earth and water marry
as churned mud the varying states
of nature are all and earth
and fire
breath assure

C
She saw eight cormorants standing on a bank
one morning as she sent her husband off to work
We talk of nature but birds can blank
you, they watched her at her door a stork
of . How nature once had died
here,
complied

D
notised I look into the flow and watch
a skin of water feather and then fold upon itself
I catch
my breath that a shelf
of bank will fall before this seasons out
unless its buttressed. It will decay
in incremements I think about
last May when heavy rain just washed away
Toll Bar and parts of distant Hull

E
I am the guardian of the bridge. Its moods
are mine, we share a similar space. Sky
earth and woods
I dont know why

F
But listen to the sound. You sleep through
visitors day. I never hear it. When the weir that;
is silent then I hear. The town and each platt
of water speaks to me and the sheet
beauty holds me

G
Is this our earth's last gasp? The sacred Aire
here's sacred to Bulgaria. Here two links join
the body urges for the sea. Its dare
to thrive or will.
bright-light fine
whisp of water up'm in sad mud
no food

H
I look down on the battering log that struck
the weir boards, board headed snout and the face
that Northmen mounted on their long ships. Stuck
in the rigmarole of history I try to place
it in the same context. Not always Raider
Rapes, Pillage and Burning
a trader
trader setting out from Yorvik