Gold

By TIM LENTON

 

Back in the day, she said,

they found gold here,

where the river bends, tightens,

then hurtles through,

tickling the silver salmon

 

It seems like bear country:

I see them scooping fish from the stream,

juggling and swallowing,

blending into the background bushes,

black as berries

 

But that is just a drifting, disappearing dream:

meanwhile you walk head down on the bonnie boulders

turning over stones like memories

looking for that fine line

 

that will carry you deeper in

and deliver everything

 

as if in the sun-soaked evening

you did not already hold it all

in your innocent,

unsuspecting hands

 

 

‘Gold’ was highly commended in The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012

 

About the poet

         

Tim Lenton is 66, married and lives in Norwich. He is a founding member of InPrint, a poetry and visual arts collaborative group, and has published three short collections of poems, starting with Mist and Fire in 2003, followed by Off the Map and Running with Scissors. His work has also appeared in various anthologies, as well as in books published by the Paston Heritage Society. He won the Fish International Poetry Prize in 2007 and the Norwich Writers' Circle Open Competition in 2010. He is a former journalist and wrote a commentary page in the Eastern Daily Press for 11 years. 

www.inprintartsandpoetry.co.uk

 

Gold / Illusion / The Poltergeist / Massacre in Houla / Fish