gutters

 gutters 

it was the gutters

that we boys walked in times

mattie’s gutter emerging white

from a pipe from who knows

and ernie’s gutter flowing under the road

and disappearing into the delta grass

to emerge all oozly under the station road

in a high arched stone culvert

complete with white stalactites and rats

scurrying bravado as far as the ventilation shaft

or the sulphurous stepped gutter 

fresh from the slag tips above its falling

under the road and the railway and on

past the scrap works to don the river tawe

there were others of course

up past bethlehem chapel in that steep ravine

frogged and tin can ratted well past john’s shops

or the one that pistled red out of the gold mine

fossiled into kilvey hill deep in the quarries so minded

or the one from the spring that ran in chickweed

alongside the railway and upper bank signal box 

the glory of our gutters ran straight through our childhood

coloured our adventures of dams and fingered our fountains

ratted our hunting and frogged our days

froze our fingers or cooled our summer ardours

paced our strides through the village boundaries

questioned our where-from and our going-to

the small backyard ones banked with ashes

or the wild ones embracing their fall into the rivers

of our windings and our to and from ings 

few were cemented many were clinker-lined of old

or meandered of their own free will unhindered by tradition

by the neglect of elders and the distain of boys at play

remembered in the longevity of memory they flow

still and serene in their dilapidation and their nuance

of adventures gone to ground or run into the sands

of time for supper with hands not washed long enough

to remove the bacterial inoculations of longevity

or the romance of wet reminiscences by dry hands

endowed with parchment skin and quivering fingers

that ring the rime the tears of great distance 

for the gutters are still there running their waters

through a heart of a different hue