Handrail Poem by Paddy Glackin

handrail

Glad to see you again old friend
Smoothed for my hand to glide
Along your handworn steel
Like an old lovers thigh

Anchored in granite cubes
Stepped down scaling your slope
That I remember as vast
And now no bigger than a stretch

The weeds earn their right
To grow between you and the bridge
The flow skirting around the Whirlpool
Down through the Castle Hole

Those four arches sentinel to the derg
Neighbour to you for a lifetime
As it once amplified the bombs
And now fleadh music instead

Will the sandy beds be forgotten?
Or the Clahys and the Peaks
Good swimming holes, rocks where
Children now will never dive

Never know what it is to
Strip on a dock filled bank
To avoid the cow dung
And the Pish the Beds

To lie on a bed of grass
Or squat behind a bush
No fluffy towels or shower gels
Just giving the sun time

No doubt there will be an engineer
Who never will know your worth
Or feel our bond of excitement
Of a day on the river derg

Who will make us obsolete
Who will replace you galvanised
So much better; and pointed steps
I am glad to see you again old friend.

You health and safety fiend.