Rivers and reality

Back to the running-regime from tomorrow - hoping my left knee will be okay ... so, for now, its a poem day.

And here's one from Edwin Morgan; first published in 1997 (volume as pictured).

Given the dominance of the River Rhein for us, throughout the last week, thought one on permanence and shifting reality would be appropriate:


The Ferry

The ferry shudders, chugs, noses, quests.
A sailboard like an angel skims the crests.
The land of rhyme is active: nothing rests.

The farther shore, the darker blue, the smudge.
Get to the bow, get your binoculars, budge!
It's a long island, but you have to judge -

watch! - your landing on a place so virtual
its blue might be a blues, a throb, a spiritual,
it searching you, you it, mute, mutual.

Never believe it! - buffet, buck, breach
dimensions like meniscuses, give speech,
cry out, scrunch your keel right up the beach.

The sailboard like an angel-fish head on
has virtually vanished, only to don
a shimmer that long after it has gone

you could stand watching, waiting for the time
when it must turn and be itself, and chime
with what you know is real on waves of rhyme.


What's real; what's imagined; what's permanent? What a wonderful poem.