Modern Mercia: Rus in Urbe

[cynwulf]

Modern Mercia: Rus in urbe
Impressions on a canal walk in Wolverhampton

Crows croak from metal crags,
a bonfire flames, smoke plumes drift,
their feathers furl, float across two narrowboats.
Oil slicks slide, curl seven-coloured
tainting the corpse of a tortoiseshell cat
swirled in a jostle of junk and flotsam,
a Sargasso of cardboard, splintered plywood.

Beneath this spew a spider dips,
drops quicksilvered to its sky-filled bell.
Zooplankton flickers, zigzags by
where water fleas jink through chinks of sunlight.
Deeper writhing wreathed in blood,
a stickleback battles a great diving beetle,
as caddis inch across the emerald bed,
kaleidoscopic, cased in iridescent glass.

Fixed to a reed, a damselfly discards its mould,
rests, stiffens, stretches latticed wings,
quivers, rises -a ruby arrow.
A bee flails the water, fouled in duckweed,
abdomen awash, head and thorax sunk;
too far out to reach and rescue with a stick.
Pond skaters dart, dimple the surface,
borne on a web molecule-woven.

Burnet moths flutter, flaunt their livery
patrolling trefoil patches on the banks.
Striped caterpillars strip ragwort leaves,
flowers yet untouched flecked with thunderbugs.
Butterflies pause on the path's dark ash,
and blow away in a blur of blue.
Wolf spiders hunt haunting tufts of red fescue,
some towing turquoise egg cocoons.

A Manchester-Paignton train, pressed for time,
rattlesnakes past a diesel and its dozen shackled trucks
clattering northwards on the other track;
their racket masks the mile-off
murmur of the motorway.
Pylons tower, trailing cables,
speeding their silent traffic fast as light.

High above, screaming swifts dissect the sky.

[AlanReynolds]

Sharp and good reporting of impressions, Cynwulf.

This one line Deeper writhing wreathed in blood, seems to ring false if I'm reading it correctly, because while the poem is about your impressions I don't think you could 'see' this.

Best regards,

Alan

[ray miller]

Very closely observed!

Beneath this spew a spider dips,
drops quicksilvered to its sky-filled bell.

I love the sky-filled bell. I'm wondering how all that follows occurs beneath the canal rather than beside it.

A bee flails the water, fouled in duckweed - don't you need some punctuation after duckweed?
abdomen awash, head and thorax sunk;

Striped caterpillars strip ragwort leaves,
flowers yet untouched flecked with thunderbugs. - untouched by the caterpillars?

Pylons tower, trailing cables,
speeding their silent traffic fast as light. - or speeding their traffic silent as light.

[cynwulf]

Thank you both for commenting on this.
Alan, the water of the canal here is, strangely, clear as glass, surprising as it runs through a heavily industrial area, the struggle was about 2ft down well above the caddis which were also easy to see on the canal bed; there is an inaccurate bit: the murmur was from the Black Country Spine Route (A463 dual carriageway) rather than the actual motorway (M5), but I wasn't able to find a good expression to suit the circumstances.

Ray, 'beneath' because seeing the spider swim down to its bell drew my eye to the other subaquatic goings on nearby. You're right about the punctuation, I've edited as you suggest. Yes, untouched by the caterpillars. I think your suggestion on the pylons is much better than my original, keeps the alliterative pattern better, will alter in final version,
Best wishes, c.

[AlanReynolds]

Alan, the water of the canal here is, strangely, clear as glass, surprising as it runs through a heavily industrial area, the struggle was about 2ft down well above the caddis which were also easy to see on the canal bed

Thanks for clearing that up for me

[David]

Very closely observed!

Very! And some very good observations.

But this seems to me, at present , more like a page from the poet's notebook than a finished poem. If you just want to share those vivid images, though, which you capture so well ... job done.

I would like a bit more artifice, but maybe that's just me being too artificial. I enjoyed the read anyway.

Cheers

David

[cynwulf]

Very fair comment, David, I was concerned that the piece seemed to lack fluid cohesion, rather 'bitty'. I was trying to convey the images as they had occurred- a series of haiku moments as it were, within a structure loosely based on the OE style so that any artifice was in that structure.
Asever you cause me to ponder.
Regards, c.