Winter, and the Meon,
Overflows its banks,
Covering the fields in,
A swirling tide of,
Clear water from the chalk downs.
By May she is,
A gentle stream.
Gone back to her bed.
With dragonflies and damselflies.
In coloured courtship’s dance.
High Summer: Still fed from,
Chalk hills run off.
She keeps her level while,
Bovine beasts drink their fill.
And children splashing play.
The sun beats down,
On ripening fields with,
Rippling reflections in the water.
Sun, blue sky where white clouds,
Float beneath the surface.
Swallows eat their fill,
Of insects, on the wing.
Days are long, and air is filled,
With the drone of bees.
And the drone of combine harvester by the hill.
Old river where Saxon,
Meonwara’s longboats,
Pulled upstream with straining oars.
By men with long blond braided hair.
Eager for land, for women and for peace.
Old young river.
Gentle stream; caring not,
For England’s history. They are but men.
And among the rivers of the world.
A lesser stream of only thirty miles.
Mighty Amazon, Zambesi with its falls.
Ancient Nile, Rhine, Danube, or the Thames.
These too have seen the darkness, but,
Meon, of rivers, do I love thee best.
In Summer, in Winter, Autumn or,
In Spring, when all is green and bursting into life.