Angling For Narrow Boats

In celebration of World Poetry Day, we'd like to share Brendan Hawthorne's poem 'Angling For Narrow Boats' with you, which will be published in 'Tipton Tales'- a book of newly commissioned poetry focusing on the Sandwell town of Tipton. Angling For Narrow Boats Floats bob on lazy eddies piercing meniscal surface tension now clear from past pollutions and any toxins held in suspension See the master carp weave a slalom through the waters of a clear mainline where Caggy’s yard repaired holed hulls bored by the corrosive metal moths of time We are free of the clatter and the clang Of metal being hammered and drop forged Yet still we hear them through the memories of when once varied industries engorged their way through what lay beneath this blackened Carboniferous earth Millennia of life that died for gain and once spent left behind this dearth But past glory survives in the eyes of a people oh so proud Grit still flows in their veins from industry’s primal scream out loud! We bought our music from Owen Street Dark Side of the Moon to Planet Gong A bed rock sequence of foundations on which to measure our lives along In plain view of the cooling towers and Bolton Court’s windows in the sky that passively saw nothing But recorded everything passing by The coal trucks that flicked up bricks and slaughter wagons that held a cry And the cranes of post industrialism that often went rolling by The cargo trains of a nation over the years they came and went Rumbled the ground beneath our feet so many could pay their rent And the canals gave way in time to the benefits of road and rail When hours were measured in pounds and cheap labour was up for sale And now the silence shatters a past that built a world from the sweat on its back No more chemical outfalls or umbered sunrises veiled by chimney stacks And floats still bob on lazy eddies Waiting for a piscine attack Large scale industry may be finished But the boats are coming back Listen. You can hear the shift The boats are coming back Brendan Hawthorne