Nature’s Highway

Swindale Beck meanders as before

Its gentle curves hold treasure at its core

It ripples over shallows and rumbles in deep pools

Back to its old self and rid of fools

 

Men rid it of its wander taking out its bends

They straitened it – canal cut – a line that never ends

And gentle waters flowed too fast disturbing nature’s feast

And flash floods came in heavy rain the water then a beast

 

Now man and nature work together in blissful harmony

Gone the cruel strait canal gone brute efficiency

Now the river gently flows and nature has returned

In fish and fly and insect wing and lessons we have learned

 

Brian Fahy

26 December 2022

 

+ ‘Diversity returns to Lakeland stream’, by Sandra Laville in The Guardian, December 26 2022.