Listen to the river by Christopher Hopkins

 

 


 

Christopher Hopkins is a Welsh poet living in Faversham, Kent. He has received an IPPY, CLMP Firecracker and three Pushcart Prize nominations. He has two chapbooks published by Clare Songbirds, New York and his third The Shape of a Tulip Bird is due out this summer. Christopher is widely published including poems in The Morning Star, The Cortland Review, Rust + Moth and Ink Sweat & Tears.

http://hopkinspoetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen to the river 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turbulence in this stretch of water 

has always called for company.

 

Either the swerve of lights from the town-land

or a restful stop of a knot.

 

They all come  to the gloss, 

the glasswork of the flooding mouth, 

the flicker of the crushed can moon.

 

They come to hear the absence singing,

a reposeful song  that rhymes       

 

I love you

 

– or when wind comes twisting in Autumn,

the ripple movements from the beginning of rain –  

 

My name is heaven. 

 

How do we love        

travelling out, on the pulse of a life’s perfect circle,

out on the dragging swell from a pin drop tear,

the confluence   

of the swallowed and the un-drinkable, 

a rush of brackish water from the setting

of the name-less stone.

 

The day-swimmer is blessed with the numbing of questions

by a coldness of the waters. And the night-swimmer,   

an eating mirror. 

 

     Maybe the body floats

     with the sully of tears, 

     and the echo sinks 

     with the weight of conviction.

 

The light has no master, here,        

now the shallows look deeper than its loneliness.           

A simple trick of the night.

 

I know how long the water waits 

while the tide is turning.

 

I’ve set my watch to it.

 

 

 

Christopher Hopkins

 

 

Stars in pocket by Christopher Hopkins

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