Reeling in the past,

wide open spaces,

these streets,

beside this river.

The past is here,

the past is in this wide open space,

it is a child of 9 and 13,

it is a friend.

The low walls that served to seat,

bouncing ball kicked way up high,

the adolescent chat of encounters

with the opposite sex,

and long wasted afternoons

spent wishing excitement would come soon.

The past is like the forsaken promise of these streets.

The pub once new, now standing closed,

the un-maintained flats and houses

boasting regeneration and refit; still no maintenance.

The current lives, like lives of old.

The people that you used to,

Who are still…

The past is here beside this river,

in the action of skimming stones,

is a monument to coal powered,

is in small boats that pass so rarely now,

which once seemed like pleasure cruisers,

the hopes of up and possibilities of downstream.

Is in glimpses of that humped back bridge and from it,

concrete jungle to left and outstretched marshes to right,

and the river uniting and dividing the two.

Water passing park, and streets and under the bridge.

Reeling in the past.