Recollections From the Golden Cree I

I know of a river of more than average Sorts... Meandering, when not dallying to maunder, Between many differing contours And unruly contorts; Where a privileged youth once Happily sought - Pursuing about his passions In the traditional methods By which his better elders Did most insist he was thereby taught. Reinforced throughout with an almost Religious zeal; Enabled with spliced cane rod Completed by ratchet-and-pawl type reel: Whereon was wound the silken line; About his slender frame hung A wicker creel - Contained therein beer and victuals For a hearty meal! Glad all the day long was he To present his barbed lure, Which, seldom, if ever, came to nought, Within the purest sporting etiquettes, That, loaded with conventional insistence, Were so obligingly fraught; And without transgression of strictest Piscatorial code - Perish the blinking thought!! Thus, whereby to ensure, his wily quarry Were gamefully hooked, played, And lawfully caught. June lit days skipped like lambs across Her sheep cropped lawns; Far distant out of sight Skylarks Singing trilly inside blue dusks and above Thinning strands of wispy-pink dawns. The whauping Curlew warbled when stalling In drifting flight; Burbling pied Oyster-Catchers, Resplendent in orange gaiters, Piping vociferously along corridors Of shortest bat-flittering night... And high up buffeted by the sharp Breath of the bare escarpment, Where soon the all-enveloping northern Snows Will cover like an old maids shawl, The red beaked Chough and Double white striped Meadow pipit, Fluttering above hidden creases, Pause to quickly fall... Into folds of Vested garments: Imperial purples and rich magentas Thrown as if discarded upon an Emperors mosaic floor; Lavish carpets of Royal claret Rolled out across the deeply-brimming Horizons of the wine-red moor. For how well I can still bring to mind That lingering warmth Of temperate Octobers sprinkled haze; Loitering aimlessly to slowly dissipate And idly laze Beneath the smouldering hills... Whose majestic heathers torched and Set alight, Now unrestrained, so fiercely blazed! Soon the antlered sounds of pointed bone Will clash furiously together, here, on this The Rut's inflamed stage; Whilst over it all - Muted bellows, resonating, as enraged Rags engage desperately in their deadly Brawl! Following inside the rutted lane, Busy with the grey flutter of the Wheatears wings, Besides seasonal disrepair Often to be found many a fellow Employed for a variety of thankless sins; Who, in abject despair, found good reasons To ruefully atone... When patching up the openings of Inexplicable holes Fashioned from toppled piles of lichen Spotted stone.