Tame Walking: I Am Tame

I am Tame. But don't let mt name deceive you, I am not a tame river.

I begin somewhere near what is called the Wellhead or the Crosswells, where waters come up from the ground around Oldbury. I know where, but you wont find me. Now you see me, and now you don't.

Here, for a hundred years, you filled me with chemicals; I turned yellow and stank, and the other rivers giggled and babbled, but I remained all the same.

Then I meander quietly through West Bromwich and Bromford, where the broom once grew, and my waters turned the great wheels that powered ponderous hammers and struck glowing blooms of iron. The ground trembled and I felt powerful. 

Some of the mills grew away from my waters, and new rivers came, stagnant and green. These new mills didn't need me, but washed the iron with acid that made my waters sour. The fish inside me began to disappear.

And I was left empty and abandoned. 

Waste of all kinds was channelled towards me. But I am Tame, I have time: I wait, I recover.

Here and there you take me underground, secret avenues beneath you. Like a whisper of something, I appear in street and place names.

Great Bridge is "Greet" Bridge, a word that has been murmured along my banks for thousands of years. Here I was gravelly, I was gritty. Early settlers called me Greot.

As I swelled you used me to mark your boundaries. I, and my sister tributaries, were the literal shape of Wednesbury.

But here I became known as the Black Brook; black with sewage, black with grease, black with coal dust, black with tired trudging as you moved me here and there like a jump rope.

I was in the way. I flooded your mines, and confused new boundaries with my meandering lines.

At Bescot I meet two great sisters. One is Fordbrook, who once tasted of lime dust and leather. The other is often called Tame too, but she has less claim to the name than me, so I call her Willenhall Brook, as once was her name. She still has the sharp taste of copper. The works have gone now, but it is in the ground and seeps into her, vibrant and orange. 

And here I meet my tired old friend, M6, who flows with me to Tame Bridge, but is then steered straight by engineers. He finds me again in Birmingham.

I converse with M5, but we don't really socialise. 

Here you have left me to flow through some of my ancient channels.

Soft and clear and smiling. 

Round the forge lake and into Hamstead and Perry Barr. It is quiet here. And although you demolished the old mansions which used my waters for their moats, I can picture them here still, where their lands have been left. This is where Birmingham grew out to meet me. 

And here, you straighten me into rigid lines, past where the church and stone bridge once made me a pretty rural scene. The bridge is one of my oldest companions.

Near where the Roman soldiers once crossed me, I briefly see my friend, M6. He seems tall and aloof, and we barely have time to speak.

And at Holford, where a great mill took part of me for its wheels, there was a clunking and grinding, all powered by my waters, then there was a pounding, and then, the stutter of rifles. My water turned turquoise from time to time. I often wondered if you would make a rainbow of me. 

Here, in Witton, you call me nuisance. But you filled my floodplain at Witton Bridge with manufactories. When my waters rose and forced me quicker and harder downstream I would struggle to turn so sharply at the bridge, so would fill the land and brook in front, and breathe. You stole the brook, my little sister. You don't let me breathe now. So I thunder on, hit walls and high banks, and back up, and then fill your homes and businesses with my waters, and with my silty stains. You can't blame me.

Under the Aston Expressway I feel the absence of part of me. As the railway came it cut me apart, and my old meander, the Serpentine, was sliced away. It was my tendril into Aston Village, part of the life of the church and the great house, and now, just an itch on a missing limb.

When you built Spaghetti Junction above me I was defiant. You moved me, I moved back. You moved me again. You steered me through concrete, but I am patient. Even now, while you read this, I am stealing the banks, pushing and pressing, left and right, and beginning to reclaim my old meanders.

M6 and I dance together; I curve, he curves. He tilts to one side and the light comes in. I breathe the air that was once smoke, where Nechells Power Station was, and I sparkle and chirrup.

As the light hits me I shimmer over riffle beds and make sport with your residue. I skim around the tyres and shopping trollies, and the patterns I make reflect in the sunlight on the belly of M6, who acts like a mirror, and I am vain as I see my beauty.

But I am a stolen river. I am taken behind high railings. Away.

And you can't follow my waters to where I meet the Rea, my little sister with tall tales from Birmingham. But you can follow the idea of me.

I am hidden through most of Bromford, and made to skulk through the white cube industrial estates behind a high fence:

But I have a secret underneath place.

Flowing through here I can imagine thousands of years in one moment, lush and green, within the gray pall of concrete.

M6 bypasses this inconvenient bend then we reconvene, and I am confined in concrete again, taken down long straight channels with the motorway above, and fenced like a dangerous animal. I miss the company of people who walk along me elsewhere. I am dark and lonely, and M6 seems to impose now, he dominates. It is near the end of our relationship.

At Castle Bromwich I break free and streak into no-man's land where the rail and road make a great island of green where I can be alone with my thoughts. I dream and desire, and make for the countryside. 

Written by Jen Dixon in 2016.