This Muddy Stream Copyright © 2008 Rob Lock

The Great Ouse at Kings Lynn still contains, we know,
each river that became it en route to the sea: Cam,
Lark, Little Ouse and Wissey - just as we contain
the people that we used to be. But previous selves,
like water, mingle to the point of confusion:
it becomes impossible to know them as they were.

If the Linnet, this muddy stream descending to the Lark,
were like Lethe in reverse, you could immerse yourself,
re-emerging conscious of the quips and pleasantries
that must have been a part of life, when getting back
to read the bedtime story was as much as you could manage;
maybe you would just make out reflections of a man

who had aimed to be something special, to turn things round;
relive some student hours spent out of the bar, and not
protesting; even resurrect the mooching moments,
board games, chores and conversations that made up
a childhood so much happier than isolated incidents
lurking in the corner of your memory.

And if, like Lake Avernus, there was a bolthole here
to the world inhabited by shadows, whose bodies
ran aground and cast them off, you could take it, slither
through a culvert to those fields, clamber out and search
for your mother, or your father; meet an echo of what
was as missing as you feared when you said the last goodbyes.

Walking together - the way they wanted to a year or so
too long - you could join them now, no-one leading,
talking across the invisible divide. They might be
any age: a diffident child, greying adult or stroppy
adolescent could be by your side, and you’d find yourself
saying, ‘You know, don’t you, I never really stopped’.