A poem by Ruby Butler.

In the river’s fog, she stands
as though carved from chert and ink —
a relic older than the Thames’
cobbled memory,
older than the ledgered bones
of Edwardian pigeons
struck from London’s chimneys.

Her legs, lattice of iron-age reeds,
thread the riverbed like
archaeologists probing
for bronze torcs in peat,
for remnants of salt and oyster
in Roman middens.

I watch her, a lone curator,
winged in the whitewash of the cathedral spire,
a ghost among gothic gargoyles
who gape down at a skyline
streaked with scaffolding
and the slick neon pulse of Piccadilly.

Her beak, a flint tool,
snaps at the water like memory
snaps at history:
from Stonehenge’s shadows to
Dickens’ mud-slick London streets,
from cuneiform in the British Museum
to videos of her
balancing on a solar-panelled canal.

I want to touch her,
trace the sediment of centuries
along her neck,
feel the weight of Tudor frost
and the sheen of phone-lit rain
on the same feather.

She lifts,
and the river hisses its own story:
Norman barons crossing a wooden bridge,
London fog curling through steam engines and kebab vans,
all of it reflected in the silvered wing
of a bird older than all of this
and entirely contemporary.

I am her witness.
I am her archivist.
And when she dives
into the sediment,
I imagine the silt swallowing me too —
future archaeologists
finding the faint impression of a young woman
who once tried to hold history
in her palm
without ever touching it.

*

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