I love walking the canal towpath at winter twilight
When evening lights are reflected in the waters,
Or walking in a winter wind,
Watching the rain drops on the stippled surface,
Glancing up at beech trees etched against the sky
Or feeling darkness shroud the old man’s beard.
And I love walking past the red brick walls
And old stone mill buildings,
That line the cobbled pock-marked path
On my way to work in Paganhill,
In the darkness of a winter’s morning,
Feeling myself slip though time to boyhood,
Seeing myself once more by Swindon’s railway walls and factory,
Or then slipping further back two hundred years and more,
When crossing the canal bridge,
Seeing the morning mist lift above the town,
But still muffling Rodborough Common and Selsley.
This is the gift of Stroud:
Watercourses, rivers, streams, canals,
Towpaths, basins, lock-gates, sluices,
Mills, railway lines, bridges, level crossings,
Viaducts, suburban streets, commons, hills, valleys,
And, always, when you walk the canal,
That level arrow through our hill sloped town,
The ghosts of trows and barges making their quiet way
From the Severn to the Thames,
As companions and company,
In living industrial archaeology.