Poem: The Thames at source
I went to a shrine without compare
To see a river that wasn’t there
We strolled from the station forecourt at Kemble
Where walkers, like Chaucer’s pilgrims, assemble
Across fields, driven by a fateful force
That guided us soon to this sacred source
Known to devotees as Thames Head . . .
only to find that the river was dead
What should have been a spring in primal fall
Had dried in the Summer from sparse rainfall
But no one expects when you go to a shrine
To suddenly see a physical sign
The source of the Thames is something rare
Like a true shrine it is there and not there.
