<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Swollen River<\/strong><\/p>\n Suddenly bright, after mid-December murk, Rhodri has reached the shops armed with clich\u00e9s. Many others shop. There are deals and bargainings Now the sky is lit by the colours of four o\u2019clock, <\/p>\n Robert Nisbet<\/strong> had a short story in the recent anthology Story II<\/em> (Parthian) and his poetry has been recently accepted by The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter\u2019s House, Turbulence, Obsessed with Pipework<\/em> and online in London Grip <\/em>and Snakeskin.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Swollen River Suddenly bright, after mid-December murk, a shopping centre Saturday. Rhodri, writing a piece for his newspaper, Christmas Commercialised, notes first of all, and more than anything, that lovely swollen river, racing its course between the shopping streets, in whirls and eddies, spits and surges. Rain has come down from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7399,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7396\/revisions\/7399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\na shopping centre Saturday. Rhodri,
\nwriting a piece for his newspaper,
\nChristmas Commercialised,
\nnotes first of all, and more than anything,
\nthat lovely swollen river, racing its course between
\nthe shopping streets, in whirls and eddies,
\nspits and surges. Rain has come down from the fields
\nfor weeks now. Tides have been high.<\/p>\n
\nHe expected the ringing of the cash register,
\ngets in fact the whirr and purr of the card machines.
\nIn the wine shop, Jenny serves him
\nbut the bell and tassel on her Santa\u2019s cap
\nhang without enthusiasm. She will serve wine
\ntill six, when Darren will collect her,
\nthen they\u2019ll bicker a path round Tesco.
\nRhodri meets the Harrieses. Twenty per cent off,
\nsays Mister H, is eighty per cent still on.
\nIn his notebook Rhodri scribbles wry humour.<\/p>\n
\nbut sometimes there are such draughts of weariness.
\n(Just outside Boot\u2019s, a surge of swollen water
\nslaps on the old quay wall).<\/p>\n
\nblue into grey and back to blue.
\nRhodri folds his pad away while,
\nmentally subterranean,
\nthe river swells in its December beauty
\nbeneath them all, beneath them all.<\/p>\n