Millhouses
In a place as palpable as knives unsheathed
she caught baying squalls. Hollow hooded shrieks
by stepped stream, dropsticks float from tangled trees,
you children who exist in her watery memories
as tousled twigs that clambered banks and pushed
away from picnic blankets spread on summer grass
until these shoots who seized their chance at last.
Her modest cascades that then tumbled taller,
topped tall slides that in time came smaller.
Look. There amongst her fallen willow leaves,
that float and drift downstream on breeze,
and clag rusty grates, fair windward passage block,
breasted upstream waterfalls and braved the locks,
until snagged sunshine in her eye burned hot.
She could not have known on reaching spring,
how scald those watersheds in scolding bring
reedy steel blade lips that pressed hard and thin;
now only think on sin. Underfoot, the smooth tiled floors
of the lower bleaches were traded in for muddy worms,
looking back downstream over years that burned,
until old trees drop leaves in lessons learned.
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