Walking snapshot poem

Thinking I stared outside; saw the windy clouds fly over, and meant to discover the unknown passage alongside the canal.

Built by a king and digged out as a deep pocket to fill the money pit by underpaid workers.

The muddy paths were wet but  a thick lamwool overcoat sheltered my body while I fought the whistling wind the sun shined in my eyes, low as winter.

Snapshots from where I came from, behind my back towers penetrated colored clouds, and in front the valley of the yachting Jeker river with too much water between its banks; was it possible to drown in there for the cat that jumped and missed the bridge that otherwise would have crossed it over.

The other bridge in sunshine; Vroenhoven, newly built as a platform in history is where my walking journey began.

Alongside the waterway, straight forward wandered my boots the pavement; a bit insecure pressed against the marl wall that rises up high as a carved mountain of sand.

My mountains, the not more than hills ascending, descending landscape that once improved the muscles of my legs.

But now, today it is becoming harder to climb while my age is going up by itself, I have to push to tell my legs that it is not as steep as they think.

A stick might help, but not here walking the flat paveway alongside the canal.

Boats float up and down between the harbors of the rivers Meuse and Scheldt; the Belgian highways of water bringing goods and commodities.

One still has Christmas lights on board in the cabin; a proud skipper waiting for three kings to come and give him presents perhaps.

It is just what one believes: Santaclaus in a nickel and a dime, watching stupid sheep smart at me.

It looks like granite walls, the old eroded marl painted black in marvelous bright winter light.

Curves as if it forked out the earth; ancient material pressed long gone sealife, and it is funny to realize that men now has to dig for just a steady line of water.

Once I had to swim this route; I couldn't’t have lived here, or only on a boat; now I can dig holes in the soft sandstone ridge and be rich finding fossils of shells.

How happy almost no vegetation covering, some green spots of hope maybe, do I see other people walking the way; chatting, staring without seeing the landscape they cross, are part of for a while, until they are back home where they watch TV without recognizing the animal planet they were born on.

Men was here is graffitied on the wall, as if no one knew; paint in carved caves where not a soul lives, just some animals I guess.

As like the tiny hallways in the soft stone; witnesses of life...

In a distance the next bridge; the village of my destiny where the waterway broadens and backs up the caves made by men.

Digged holes for what? For whom? For why?

Storage perhaps for what one does not want to know; or hide and seek; did I ask my dog to sniff inside, but he refused telling me that he did not know what was waiting there for him.

Clouds become thicker, turn from blue to grey as promised rain that will not fall before I’m climbing the steep way up home.

But still, my coat will keep me dry and warm, or it won’t deserve its name.

Light is falling down, absorbed by the uprising cliff of Limburgian soil.

Two midgets in a garden protecting the first house boarding the waterway; an old lump of stones, built someway back in long forgotten time by long forgotten men, as we will in some future.

The village is reached, but it is Monday and too small to have a cup of coffee outside season; a woman stares desperate at me, sitting at a forgotten non-served terrace table, smoking a cigarette and no ashtray nearby…