River Songs #5

Spin washed by eddies and ground out

A polo hole from the pliocene

Weight

Washed back to the sea

On walks up the river I began to notice deep holes that pocked the limestone bed. Some as small as a human hand, others wide enough to swallow a car.

Many dry and well above the water line.

At work, I spoke to a Geomorphologist called George who told me they were fluvial potholes, ‘relics from the last ice age’ he said. The holes were created by the power and chaos of melt water as the last glaciers disappeared from our valleys. Boulders and cobbles deposited in a depression in the limestone, spun and tumbled for a thousand years, drilling downwards.

There were no humans on this continent then, our existence barely a paragraph in the book of our planet. As I watch my children play out their part of the story, I know the unfolding crisis we’ve created will come and go - and us with it.

I take solace from that somehow. We are little more than grains of sand, washed back to the sea. Thank you for reading River Songs Take Care Dom