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The Friday Poem

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The Friday Poem on 08/07/22

We chose ‘Tellisford Weir’ by Ruth Sharman to be our Friday Poem this week because the language Sharman uses is precise and unambiguous, and yet the poem still manages to approach its subject aslant. Each word implies so much — the river, the glide downstream, those bright little buttercups balanced against dark water. The short lines and the tercet form give us time to reflect, and the resulting effect is measured, contemplative and weighty.

Tellisford Weir

We’ve swum in this river before,
though no one steps
in the same river twice.

The glassy shock, four or five frantic strokes
before we glide downstream
as if we could go on for ever:

these are familiar; what’s new
is you reciting the poem about plums
as we lounge in the grass

and me wondering how many
she’d saved for breakfast, and why
the plums should matter anyway.

You say a poem can’t cheat time,
but look how much you learn by heart —
to stop the slippage of brain cells

or for the sheer pleasure
of feeling words rolling off your tongue
like water tumbling over the weir.

And you want the detail too:
is this the River Frome, you ask,
and what’s the name of that bird?

The river never stays the same
and nor have we: just look how far
we’ve come … Wagtail, I say,

and we watch it flit from rock
to rock, at eye level
a scattering of buttercups

wavering in the wind:
little dishes of sunlight
balanced against the dark water.

Ruth Sharman works as a freelance translator from French. She has published widely in magazines, anthologies and national newspapers and is the author of three solo collections — Birth of the Owl Butterflies (Picador), Scarlet Tiger (winner of Templar’s Straid Collection Award for 2016) and Rain Tree, just out from Templar, which draws on recent journeys to South India in search of her roots. Read Annie Fisher’s review of Rain Tree on The Friday Poem.

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