GGBC – The coxes’ song.
Tricky Stream
That flicks you round
I’ve lost that heron on the corner
Plastic on his slimy post
Upstream turn right or risk a bang
Downstream turn left or mighty twang
Will gather you, your boat an’ all
In an embrace you’ll long recall.
Tricky days with tricky light:
That’s a bugger I can’t see
That hidden Eight and nor doest thee
Look where the lower margin of the trees
in winterbrown meet winter water…
………greeny-brown and black with silt;
Brown deadly reeds and good black earth
merge in the grey of Winterlight
In lifting fog and mist opaque in slanting springtime sun
There’s bugger all a Cox can see
but reference memory and so shalt thee
or damage safety and your crew’s morale.
Green buoy and hanging branch, weeping willow, creeping sallow
none of these deserve my verse.
Out there, there’s gorgeous colour.
Green yellow, chestnut brown and darkling blue, deep water’s friend
Or Rippling Blue from coach’s launch,
add reds to form our merging brown
That flows through banks of varied green
And if the light is right you’ll see
Reflecting yellow starpricks – water lily – fleckling on the darkling blue.
The truth you’ve guessed is in the birds.
Crested Grebes in mating dance, Kingfishers
owning chestnut brown in flight
Kingfisher blue in downwards strike
Gold in Goldfinch, other Yellow Starpricks, fleur-de-llys in bud,
White for Loddon here enfenced
The blacks and browns in white front geese and evil cormorants, not shags.
It’s all out there, outside the boat
My Cox’s realm, coxing GGBC
Alas, dear rowers, yours is watching me.
Colin Edgar, May 2023
