The toshers prowl their ground heads bowed

strangely lit like Jack O'Lanterns in their bowl of filth

plodding against the flow, haunted by rats bigger than is decent

dredging where the eddies form, hedging their bets

in canvas draped, like wading birds plunging to find booty

tosheroon or gold and silver welded by acid's torch

and then  junction, a change of sound a moan perhaps

and the slosh, a labouring heart hard - pressed for breath.

There the skewered bricks under untold weight

predatory dreams taking them further deeper in

to Moorgate or the Walbrook regurgitated slinking away

with its Tudor ghosts.

Slime - soft now the squirrelling sludge caresses shit and piss

of an urban conurbation.

While fever contains the world above, these men muster

forces shrouded in a dark dream.

Any one of these can be snuffed out laid low

suffocated by the stink and miasma in the ache of search

hide and seek semi - blind with ague and rat's scourge.

 

Humped they emerge into the blenched streets

and the reflections they leave behind will linger

as long as there is more to find.