Ruder Forms Survive
as featured in

‘Tales from the Southside: an anthology of short stories, poems and fiction.’ (2024)
published by the Battlefield Writers Collective

Robin song unwound from within the blackberry bushes that fruited over the wall and

through the iron rungs.

Where they were stopped, a gap in the high river forest offered a clear view of the

White Cart Water as it ran towards them. So narrowed the river through Battlefield that its

corridor was almost bridged by boughs of cypress and hawthorn, the roots of which were

rooted long and deep into the bluff side. At the bank side a jungle of purple willowherb grew

tall over long grass, and giant hogweed sprouted in columnar stalks, its florets like lace

umbrellas that almost grazed the overarching trees.

He peered over the railing at a crop of herculean hogweed stalks severed and their

fine umbels stove in, and he saw where the tall grass eroded at the riverbank; those edge-most

culm, whose inflorescence so burdened the integrity of their blades that they arched like

keyholes and seemed to thirst for the passing water. He saw the water, and the water was

empty.

‘Not a single duck to be seen,’ he said. The words rasped out of him like they hurt to

speak and he cleared his throat with a noise like the cranking of a dry engine. The robins in

the bushes hushed their little romances.

‘They’ll be there.’ Though cracked too, her voice held its assuredness, and her

assumption spoke to a familiarity they shared with the river life.

She joined his side at the railing and looked through the gap in the weeds and into the

sunlit water. The silty channel riffled contentedly over grey stone beaches and the water

sprayed off the rocks and rose over the river and its mist smelled of ammonia and faintly of

sewage. She looked upriver and then downriver, and down the grassy bank and along the

white tide weaving amongst the stones, and she too saw that there were no ducks in the river.