The Iron Bridge

Above the iron bridge
day faded into grey
 
A figure passed by
who or why was hard to say
 
(A pub called The Exchange
exchanged memories.)
 
I who am not I
but also him and her, try
 
to recall the dead now gone
(like Sir Jim for one)
 
and the still living who don’t
now gather there, can’t or won’t.
 
Being of course will last
but not without a past:
 
‘Before Abraham I was’,
After each moment a new I am.
 
So today we praise
those good drinking days
 
in that pub by the bridge
(where day still fades into grey)
 
where another waved and walked
above as we talked –
 
and were not ourselves there
for a while in Exeter.
 

William Oxley

in coffee-table collection, Isca – Exeter Moments, photographs by Barry Davidson,
2013, The Ember Press, ISBN 978-1-8731613-7-1

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Flood Plain

1
Each inter-city express
slithers across it like a serpent,
 
on wind stressed ponds
alabaster swans circulate.
 
Cows browse and defecate.
A green sponge wedged between
 
tree-frayed hills and a glaring
estuary that is mud-rimmed.
 
Mallards, herons, gulls, and cattle-
tormenting crows populate
 
this open-faced, sun-sucked wetland.
Days stack up here and
 
their supply has no end. Unlike
in cities there is no bitterness
 
but hope, the sweet taste of light,
openness, whatever…
 
2
And it was hope
helped men grope
their way through slime
of time
to better vision
of civilization;
and right next
the River Exe
build a canal
to channel
and slow
river’s overflow.
 
Begun in Tudor days
it found its way
eventually
 
to muddy estuary
and into history
as first ever waterway
to have pound locks:
gates to block
not slow but stop,
as weir cannot,
flow or flood,
for human good.
 
3
Upon this open land fringed by water
the tall sun shines a timeless eye
 
lighting low-hedged fields and sunken lanes
dark ponds where cattle congregate –
 
in such a scene there is a poetry, like
the slow coursing of history and dream.
 

William Oxley

in coffee-table collection, Isca – Exeter Moments, photographs by Barry Davidson,
2013, The Ember Press, ISBN 978-1-8731613-7-1

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At the Double Locks’ Pub

     for Chris and Penny
 
Perfected by pouring sun the canal
stretched a golden way to distant estuary
and vibrant sea. All was autumnal.
Then the ‘the heart’s affections’ sucked out
‘the truth of imagination’
by The Double Locks’ pub where duck and coot,
 
day and air, were languid and musical.
How could hatred ever be possible?
Is not the world always miraculous, as gentle
 
sun on a green plain in special light,
like then? Secular or not, a simplicity
is everywhere if men would see straight,
 
hear the speech of wind, grass-mutter,
note artistic flow and form of cloud,
and above a pub’s hubbub hear drip of water,
 
the slow secretion of a love that is sea-vast,
unchangeable as past or future.
A voice pleads, Look, look, be blest!
At this pub by uncompetitive waters
there was, that day, much talk
of terrorism and far-off slaughter
 
and the contests of peace were not heard
as, perfected by pouring sun, the canal
stretched its shining to the estuary
and even golden became a golden melancholy.
 

William Oxley

in coffee-table collection, Isca – Exeter Moments, photographs by Barry Davidson,
2013, The Ember Press, ISBN 978-1-8731613-7-1

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The Humility of Elephants

The humility of elephants – a wonder to see.
They knelt like to prayer beside the river
and lowered the travellers off their backs.
Like mobile mountains of grey leather
knelt among reeds and smashed growth
beside the long wide waters – waters
of a silver river going on purple evening.
The humility of elephants – a wonder to see.
 
Lowered to a flat boat by elephants,
gentle as strong, big, big as houses
then gone back into the all-day-twilight of jungle.
Debouched into another dream the travellers,
skiffed by silent oarsmen – swiftly, swiftly
downriver ever nearer star-weeping sky.
 
Night sky hallmarked by a polished moon.
River, a great sheet of music unrolled
between banks of monkey-startled trees.
Music scribed on plucked waters accented
by stars – lyric of experience for them,
a journey for travellers like a going
beyond life or death, returning home
to some place of solace, pristine
and forgotten but still there. Or here,
in the heart’s endlessly syllabled river
where words are stones dredged up
by watery rhythms, rhythms of light.
 
All started by the humility of elephants –
a wonder to see for those travellers.

William Oxley

in collection, Namaste: Poems of Nepal, 2004, Hearing Eye,
ISBN 1-870841-98-0

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