The river is in a resurrection fever.
Now at Easter you find them
Up in the pool’s throat, and in the very jugular
Where the stickle pulses under grasses –
Cock minnows!
They have abandoned contemplation and prayer in the pool’s crypt.
There they are, packed all together,
In an inch of seething light.
A stag-party, all bridegrooms, all in their panoply –
Red-breasted as if they bled, their Roman
Bottle-glass greened bodies silked with black
In the clatter of the light loom of water
All singing and
Toiling together,
Wreathing their metals
Into the warp and weft of the lit water –
I imagine their song,
Deep-chested, striving, solemn.
A wrestling tress of kingfisher colour,
Steely jostlings, a washed mass of brilliants
Labouring at earth
In the wheel of light –
Ghostly rinsings
A struggle of spirits.