She exacts a heavy toll for her bounty. Languid deceiver, her tempting waters beckon offering cool respite from the midsummer sun, but sly she conceals the suffocating murk prowling beneath.

I once heard tell of a girl, no reckless drunkard stumbling into a damp sepulchre nor rue and rosemary-adorned Ophelia but an unstained life cut short in a selfless act.

Her bankside frolics interrupted by the screams of a playmate whose tiny foot was stuck fast in a sunken willow root, she dived and Dark River’s merciless eddies sucked her under.

Police were called to the scene but too late. All that remained Was to drag her, a lifeless doll staring, unmoved, to the nettled bank.

When they left, the gathering gloom was heralding the close of the day and a deathly calm descended balm for the restless child spirit.

Dark River, indifferent to the tragedy idled her drowsy way across the plain and only a barn owl, shrieking twilight phantom seemed to observe the obsequies.

A smothering mist descended and a heron passed overhead on its mournful, lumbering flight from shallows to roosting ash.

*****

Go down to Dark River today and you’ll see no sign of that halcyon July afternoon shattered by such unspeakable horror.

Above the weir the swans still glide and kingfishers still flash across the flood. Her hero soul is at play now with the ghosts of salmon, long since gone to the sea.

Footnote:

This valley I love Is no sundered granite cleft Shrugged into existence But soft, woven into gentler fabric Gathered in by gloved hands.

A hamlet hearth Welcoming as the womb. Coveted secret, close-clasped As a fragile infant Is held to the breast.

Come Maytime In blossom-heavy hawthorn thickets Bickering sparrows gather in gangs For the annual turf war Muscling out the finches.

And the cuckoo Thuggish pretender Transmits its signature call A muffled station ident From an unidentified location.

Half distant, across the corn Atop the valley side Stands The Holy Angels Thrusting Victorian invocation Of a once-English God

Where, with evening The bell-ringers come And nature is nudged aside As the pitching, rolling changes Flood the valley