The river plaits its murk with borrowed light.
Nettles swoon and brambles darn the path.
A bleak smell pulls me on and inside out.
Here shit and soft foundations open up.
It feeds on yesterdays like an intestine.
It is a long cut draining dark froth eastwards.
This walk is diagnosis, exploration.
The sullen banks are spiked with night's mementoes.
Now ozone odour stiffens like epoxy.
My sinuses extract humid depression.
Low earth mounds appear: barrows, burials.
Like water, old customs gather at low points.
The stinking boundaries here will crumble soon.
Would it were only water they hold back.