More riverbank listening

Where the tributaries meet the river, and really it is better than the sea in some cases (whatever the Waterboys say...)

Image by Jules Horne

Check out further responses from World Listening Day here http://workingthetweed.co.uk/2013/06/30/riverbank-listening-a-world-listening-day-project/

Riverbank listening 02

I have walked the dry Huntlyburn before. (It loses it water to farming needs in a reservoir further up each year.)

This poem first appeared in Northwords Now.

The burn bed

The sheets are pulled back

leaving a scuff of algae

like the velvet jacket

on the back of a drunk.

The stepping stones of the ford

mosaic the mud

unseen

for a generation.

That last pool endured

days of scum and midge

pokes for fry

until it too was dry.

Desert scrolls and stones

litter this new path

beneath meadowsweet walls;

the depth of the pot

attracts a shoal of blackbirds

to hoe its moist furrows.

Alight.

I wake myself to follow.

© Bridget Khursheed

Riverbank listening 01

I have been working on this project around about 6pm at the junction of the Huntlyburn and the Tweed.

The Huntlyburn is dry and the Tweed flowing.

An opportunity to follow the Huntlyburn tributary riverbed now a path with large cobbles moving and clattering beneath my feet.

Sandmartins whose nest entrances I can now see fly in arcs above. Grass and thick vegetation moves swishing and pulled by the breeze the main river sucks towards it. And the oystercatchers - followers of Bridget - call in alarm as I stravaig through their territory.

A drainage pipe marks the join between wet and dry river beds. And the water of the Tweed flows with a fast fluent sound; and a bass note of glugs as the water passes over the pipe.

How many notes does water flow contain?