What is this poem about?
Thursday, January 28th, 2010can someone briefly summarize this poem, tell me what its about?
And is there anything ’special’ about the last line of this poem? does it mean anything?
Inked ribbon - a slash of silver winked
beneath the arch-browed brick…
I pulled over, quick - just past the bridge.
Next Sunday, set out from where I’d left off - another voyage
down that towpath: about six miles - after calling a halt and tracking back.
Though you could not get lost, I noted landmarks: a stone cottage by a lock:
an aqueduct; the walking-time between every outpost pub;
discovered plain silence - mounted astride an oak scrub
under drizzle by an empty hen-coop.
Then, after following the cut along a hugh-banked loop,
surprised twenty minutes later when a tunnel,
spooling in the black one, forced me to surface from an unrecognized angle
on a stretch of suburban road that I could name.
After several Sundays, I’d worked out our likely finale before it came -
fences closing in along the back of terraces,
past cobbled loading-wharves and shored-up warehouses:
the last leg terminated in a derelict canal basin
I’d been navigated back to within
a short bus-ride from where i live;
released from the countryside, once more a native,
where, above this oily maze of waterways, railway bridges criss-crossed
long distances- rigged in a rusty blue-grey and iron-latticed.
In fact, the canal’s urban ending - I liked that decaying format best.
But just as I’d got off pat this new topography, a quest
felt ended - all behind-the-scenes concealments charted,or mentally, at least,
connected up. I went home finally to consult a map.
Since when - by me - the canal’s not been visited. Never made another trip.
Lanie