These are our waters
Canal laureate Roy McFarlane has written this poem especially for the Canal & River Trust’s 10th anniversary.
These are our waters.
The boater, navigating veins that have pumped through this network for a quarter of a millennium, veins that fed an industrial revolution the beating heart of a colonial empire.
These are our waters.
The railway man saw them as a threat and wedded together steel and waters, only later to leave them tired and disused while they told their grand stories of a new age and left the waters in the shadows.
These are our waters.
Easter boat gatherings – idle woman, no never idle from WWII with their IW badges working hard along these inland waterways.
These are our waters.
Making life better by waters – from Tony Hales and Allan Leighton to giving praise to Leeds’ unsung heroes, all visionaries and dreamers transforming places enriching lives.
These are our waters.
Young blood pumping nowhere to go, these waters know young and wild, nurtures and care for adolescents as they swagger and shout these are our endz.
These are our waters.
Empire’s children return to the neighbourhoods bordered by mills, factories and steelworks. Here in our backyards in a basin of diversity running parallel to alleyways we play, we dare and make love under tunnels and by the lands that kiss and rub next to towpaths and in the evening, we colour them Diwali mix-tape folk dance with hip-hop.
These are our waters that will carry our sorrows.
The bush and hanging trees catching our waiting dreams and waters will take our misery and herons will show you the joy of standing still, until the sun goes down.
These are our waters, let it be said by women who have to navigate dark corners, the roving eye just to walk these waters to run in freedom to the horizon that others take for granted.
These are 2000 miles of water breathing life into countryside urban spaces, villages and hamlets corridors to another world, creating and conjuring green and blue spaces.
Black Country Voyages to a Brummie Canal Serenade of riverside festivals and Shakespeare on the waters.
Lock keepers and Heron watchers volunteers and community gardeners paddler and wild water swimmers knit and natter to make it better this is the Super Slow Way these are our waters.