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25th August, 2023

Friday Poem – ‘The River People’ by Cath Drake

A single white feather floating on the surface of a rippling river bed.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The River People’ by Cath Drake from her collection The Shaking City. Cath recently came second in the Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry with her poem ‘Wadjemup Rottnest Island’.

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.

Cath also runs regular online workshops and mindfulness sessions as part of her ongoing event series The Verandah. The next season of events are due to begin in September including The Climate of Change Poetry Challenge and Dive into Poetry. Take a look at all of the courses she offers on her website cathdrake.com.

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Related Books

The Shaking City

Cath Drake

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