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Daylighting (A reblog)

Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul, South Korea,
daylighted from sewers in 2003. Image: Kaizer Rangwala, Flickr.

As I said yesterday's poem was the last of the new pieces I wrote for this year's Wonderful Wander, but we didn't use it on the walk. 
Instead Mylie Brennan read this piece which I wrote a few years ago and which, consequently DOES feature in my new collection "Hedge Songs," which will be launched next Friday evening. 
As I said on the walk and when I originally posted this poem, daylighting is a contemporary urban environmental movement, encouraging urban planners to uncover culverted rivers and discover the difference that properly managed waterways and green spaces can make to the wellbeing of those living and working in cities. The UK has been relatively late to this global trend, but it might have a special resonance in my home city, which is actually named after a long-buried river. On our walk this year, after we left the banks of the Lagan we largely followed the hidden course of the Blackstaff River, upstream across the Gasworks, along Ormeau Avenue, Bruce Street and Hope Street, to the corner of what is now "Boyne Bridge Place" and the site of the buried "Salt Water Bridge" over which King William allegedly rode en route to his showdown with King James. So much history is buried beneath our cities along with such rivers.
The poem was originally prompted by Steve Aisthorpe's book "Rewilding the Church", which uses contemporary environmental strategies as prompts and metaphors for thinking about the future of  the church in the increasingly post-Christian west. In it he suggests that we, like urban planners, should re-examine our spiritual histories to "daylight" the diverse spiritual streams that have nourished people in the past, as explored by Richard Foster in his book "Streams of Living Water." 

A long-forgotten river
Reduced to a reeking sewer,
Confined to a red brick culvert,
Like many other streams
And stories buried 
deep beneath our feet,
Adding nothing to our city
Save its name.

Let the daylight in.
Let life-giving waters
Flow free.

What other streams and springs
Are interred beneath 
Layer upon layer of tradition?
Lying, neglected, forgotten 
And yet feared, undermining
All that has subsequently 
Been built upon it
Unknowingly.

Let the daylight in.
Let life-giving waters
Flow free.

Selah
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