Tuesday Poem: Cloud Chamber by Janet Sutherland

in a new light       the river
water weightier
than oil or slub
viscous slip
beer-bottle brown

you notice don't you
language clarifies

or chant these slim diminutives:
rivulet     rill     run     burn     beck
runnel     freshet     torrent     force     jet
and riveret (now rare or obsolete)

none of them hold
    such corrugations welded from below
    such heavy fish
etched as with acid from cast steel
these gate-keeper
herons       iron posts
charting a route
you might well walk beside

bright air above
cloud trails      scraps      gnats      slant swifts in flight


© Janet Sutherland

Watermarks Anthology, The Frogmore Press, 2017

I thought about this poem the other evening when, after a very long, hot drive from the southern end of England, we finally arrived back at the Mill on the banks of the river Eden.  We had a 'carrier bag' picnic with salads and wine bought at a service station on the motorway and then, looking at the weir - calm and cool reflecting the evening sky - we stripped off and threw ourselves into the beer-bottle brown water and let the river wash the journey away.  I lay in the river (which smells unromantically of ducks) and watched the clouds drifting across as the swifts wheeled and screamed overhead searching for low-flying insects. 

We live in the country of burns and becks and are familiar with torrents when the river is in flood and its weight pushes everything in front of it. The 'gate-keeper/herons' stand guard on the weir every morning in the ever-changing light. 

I'm a great fan of Janet Sutherland's poetry, which doesn't always follow the route you expect it to.  I particularly liked her collection Bone Monkey, from Shearsman.  Bone Monkey is a shamanistic creature from mythology, who keeps popping up in different disguises.  Sometimes he's 'a grinning ape', or 'a bone-thin workman with a sly look', or 'a hangman in a tattered vest'.  He's a trickster - out of time, elemental.   The poetry is similarly slippery  - always shearing off in unexpected directions and difficult to pin down for analysis. I like to be surprised;  I like to be taken out of my comfort zone.  I want my hair to stand on end when I read!

One of my favourite poems from the collection is a beautifully crafted, more conventional poem called 'My Red Morocco Jack Boots'.  Bone Monkey is currently an English Gentleman abroad in Illyria in 1846 and definitely up to no good when he spies a vulnerable Serbian woman.

There are seven stations between Belgrade and Alexnitza
where changing horses takes an hour.  At Pashapolanca
we had bread and slivovitz then lay on hard board
and slept very soundly.  In white caps and German blouses,

Turkish trousers, with twelve yards of stuff, and jack boots
(mine were red morocco) our cavalcade moved off.
At night the path was very striking, summer lightning
pierced the dense foliage.  I am not a Romantic . . .

If you would like to read the whole of the poem, this is the link - 

 You can buy Bone Monkey from Amazon.co.uk 

Janet's poem 'Cloud Chamber' is featured in the Watermarks Anthology of Wild Swimming published by Frogmore Press.  You can buy it here.