No way to treat royalty

It used to move sugar and cotton,
hoofed tensioned tow ropes
now decorate canal moorings,
tarmac creeps black through its veins.

Nature’s graveyard is quiet today,
children amble ahead, splat bricks
in stinking beds, conversations dead
free to be but no place or purpose.

A shopping trolley for the lock keeper,
army ant perch strangle the reeds,
I know the colour of drowning water,
mixed with a tear in my anglers hand.

Majestic pike strikes the surface,
his gills can't fill in stagnant pools,
a broken bulldog's jaw trawls for food.
I saw panic in its eyes and it saw me.

The young matadors sense its pain
trying to maim something so precious,
so barely alive evolved to survive,
little flags did it, no trumpet sounded.

No celebration on council house streets,
silver threads floated, bloated, another
sport of kings they've missed,
precious little shits, it’s no fucking way to fish.