The Lock-Keeper’s Daughter

The Lock-Keeper’s Daughter

The Lock-Keeper’s Daughter

Take me away from this terrible place,
very slowly, by barge, rising through
the frothy lock outside my window
like an old cinema organ.
Ours will have been the most tacit
of courtships, the most offhand
of consummations as I step
aboard from the vegetable patch.
Expressionless townsfolk will process
from the church to the water’s edge
and my discarded bouquet float by
to the wheeze of an accordion waltz.
I too have dreamed of a tattooed
first mate and an infestation
of cats in the saucepans and hold.
The candour of my wedding dress
will face down scarecrows
and cornfields from the prow.
Take me away from this terrible place
two or three miles down the water,
no more: nowhere else can I
be happy but where the water voles
splash and the kingfisher combusts.
I hear the lock close behind me
and grant the water its steely
abolition of our having
ever passed through. I will walk
the length of the barge backwards
to you and into our future.