(20 minute poetry)

Past the barges easing along the canal, over the aqueduct,
******* the morning into my lungs,
flinging my satchel of schoolbooks because tomorrow never comes,

and then off to the islands for a pirate's day out,

tickling trout (the rainbow kind) lunch well deserved for the deserving mind.

I loved the river
the smell and the feel
the eels
the gulls
the turn of the tide

I took pride in it
knew every nook
every brook that loaned a little more strength to the length of it.

And then they altered it
sunk all my islands
dammed all the brooks

for ***** sake
can't they leave well enough alone?

The rivers not a home to be,
but it was a home for me
a long time ago.