Check out Symmetric Chess, our featured variant for March, 2024.

Ode to a Delightful English River

By Charles Gilman

Isis, Windrush, Evenlode, and Cherwell,
with your confluences flanking Oxford
,
such plurality your name of "Thames" gives -
simply meaning "more than one dark river".

Once united south of Oxford city,
you embark on tentative meanders,
crossed and crossed again by Brunel's railway.

A fifth "Thame" converges from the north side,
one called simply by the singular name.

Then comes Reading, likely future city,
where the Kennet joins you from the south side,
bringing in its own line of the railway.

East of Reading, once more from the south side,
joins the Loddon, with which the Blackwater
has already merged in deepest Berkshire.

You turn north, as if from sheer momentum,
to resume your general eastward motion
at what we may call, by way of punning
on terms medical, the Loop of Henley,
which it keeps past Marlow to a south turn.

Sharply northward from the railway's main line
branches turn to those respective townships.

Going south you cross the line one final
time, to head southeast through royal Windsor,
served by just as sharp a branch but southward.

Windsor marks a cultural transition.

Mainly rural Oxfordshire and Berkshire,
with their isolated towns and cities,
are behind. Ahead suburban Surrey
will be different, even in its railways,
one branch of which reaches west to Windsor.

Surrey starts at Runnymede, made famous
as the place
a cardinal, a marshal,
and some barons made their king relinquish
powers unsafe in the hands of one man
.

Just downstream, by a vast inland delta
joins the southward-flowing Colne, the marker,
since the Chess, Gade, and Ver confluences,
of the Middle Saxons' western boundary.

Then comes Staines, Ad Pontes to the Romans,
from whose age a town and bridge have been there -
and, one must suspect, traffic congestion!

To your southernmost point you meander,
round Shepperton, Sunbury, the Hamptons,
and the railway branch line that connects them.

On the southern side, the railway's main line
cuts through Weybridge where Winstanley's Diggers
strove to further still empower the people.

From this side the Wey and Mole in turn join.

East of Hampton Court, which has a branch line
stopping just short of you, you turn northward
past the Hogsmill confluence at Kingston,
Surrey's main administrative centre,
under railways both there and at Richmond,
past the floral splendour of Kew Gardens,
to a latitude not seen since Windsor.

Once more you resume your main direction.
Hammersmith brings you to Inner London.

Fulham, Chelsea, and Wandsworth soon follow,
where Roundheads designed their constitution.

On the north approach London's two Cities,
shadowed by a pair of South Bank boroughs.

Palaces, cathedrals, state departments,
theatres, galleries, and finance houses
crowd your shores, as famous ships lie off them.

From the cities four great railway bridges
head for Kent and Sussex, while a road bridge
towers over what was once The Tower,
and affords views of the conurbation.

Further east, among redundant dockyards,
higher yet new towers loom above you.

Round them you loop south, touching on Greenwich,
with its heritage of stellar study,
then back north to where the Lea converges,
eastern boundary for the Middle Saxons,
which has brought the Stort with it since Broxbourne.

As you widen, through a barrier to
stop floodwaters, Kent and Essex flank you,
each side with its own suburban railway.

From Kent join in turn the Cray and Darent,
at two towns named after fords across them.

Pairs of sites flank you like broken bridges:
Lakeside and Bluewater shopping centres,
Tilbury and Gravesend ferry landings.

Finally Southend and Medway City
form a second centre in their own right,
though a centre yet to be united,
with no bridge or tunnel east of Dartford.

The Medway, your final tributary,
joins as you reach out into the North Sea,
culminating by the Isle of Sheppey,
in a gulf giving a single coastline
to East Essex, and to Kent a north one.

From the Continent, as if to meet you,
just across this shallowest of seaways,
comes the Rhine... but that's another story.


Written by Charles Gilman.
WWW page created: June 2005.