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2nd February, 2024

Friday Poem – ‘The River People’ by Cath Drake

Photo of a lone swan swimming away, leaving a trail of ripples in its wake

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The River People’ by Cath Drake from her collection The Shaking City. Cath is running an online Dive into Poetry workshop on the theme of River Muses on Sunday 18th February for poets and writers of all levels. Find out more on her website cathdrake.com.

The River People One day they just arrived, camped for days on our river island, waiting for swans, but none came. We don’t know who they were, why they weren’t moved on. They were sun-blushed, ethereal, used hand signals we’d never seen before. On our daily commute across the highway from island to city and back, we watched their canvas tents and sometimes a figure or two of a man, woman or child walking in the hot dust like a mirage. The bridge’s heavy traffic drowned any sound of the birds, tides, their daily doings. We couldn’t tell them when the swans disappeared. Would you have noticed if a highway, a skyscraper, or if the river vanished and there was just gravel under your feet? Will you still call this place Swan River? We felt their heavy ochre eyes. They made a swan shrine from a mass of grass, bark and reeds: its beak pointing skyward, long pampas grass feathers flying in the breeze. Every time we crossed the bridge we felt the loss, imagined their reflections in the water swimming with glossy black swans. One day, the River People just went. We didn’t get to ask them anything. The shrine eventually let go into the wind, blowing into the river, into our Swan River.

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Related Books

The Shaking City

Cath Drake

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