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Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

Severn Crossing


Do you remember when you took me to your river?
Were you thinking I would love it as you do?
We stood at its hem where a muddy emulsion
slicked our boots.  There was black weed
with its petrified pods, hopeless on the rocks;
and you staring at the scheming currents.

You taught me there of your alliances with opacity
and the treachery of tides,  how I must not question
your pact with  the psychopathy of water;
its relentless purposeless purpose.  We drove inland
then, not speaking.  I thought of my own river; rococo
by comparison; speaking every thought, singing every tune.

Do you remember how we stood on opposite banks
then and no ferry?  Did you hear, through the fog,
the cries of the drowning men?  Did you ever walk,
like me, to the end of the fractured span
of the railway bridge and look over the edge?