Written piece
From my moorland river to you
Pauline Sturges
United Kingdom
About this piece
I acknowledge the history and environment of West Yorkshire, England - cotton mills which plundered the wealth of its colonies countries in the past and polluted rivers flowing to the world's oceans today.
Threads
From my moorland river to you
Drawn down the clough
of mossed boulders
like a needle pulling thread
to the pond below
(where a mill chimney decays)
(where yellow iris flower in flood,
wither in drought)
deep into the earth the water flows
knitting with yarns of tributary
to the Calder
and the sea.
Polluted in past times by cotton slave mills.
Polluted today by sewage, slurry and plastic.
The ocean pulls the water on and on
and weaves into a phosphorent quilt
of turquoise greens
to you and you and you
from me
our histories stitched together
and torn apart
by my nation’s plunder
of the wealth you never knew.