John Delaney’s publications include Waypoints (2017), a collection of place poems, Twenty Questions (2019), a chapbook, Delicate Arch (2022), poems and photographs of national parks and monuments, and Galápagos (2023), a collaborative chapbook of his son Andrew’s photographs and John’s poems. Nile, a chapbook of poems and photographs about Egypt, appeared in May 2024. John Delaney lives in Port Townsend, WA.
Please visit John Delaney’s website: https://www.johnmdelaney.com/
Camargue Bulls and Horses
Black and white: you think of formal settings,
wedding gowns and sleek tuxedos,
dignitaries and funeral marches,
a Snow White princess or a witch’s hat.
In the Camargue, it’s a different story.
Hardy white horses are raised to do work.
Black bulls are bred for the Carmaguaise.
It’s more about manades finding glory.
Imagine a bull in an arena,
defending its attributes, bright tassels
hanging from its horns, from the raseteurs
dressed in white, who snatch then leap out of way;
or horses on the ranch herding the calves
in training, their gentle temperaments
and stamina fitted for endurance
riding, dressage, and even therapy—
as black and white play a different role
in this coastal region of salt marshes,
of uniquely evolved bulls and horses
and virile sport where death is not the toll.
Indigenous to the Camargue marshes and wetlands of southern France, these white horses constitute a traditional breed of French workhorse. The bulls are a domestic breed of cattle native to the same area and used in a popular kind of bloodless bull-fight sport.
Growing Oysters
Sessile, meaning they remain in one place,
filtering what passes by for sustenance.
(Trees do that, with bark as their shells, the soil
as their sea.) They need little maintenance.
Men grow them from tiny drops of cells, till
large enough to be strung on long panels,
three-high, with cement. They spend many months
hanging in the brackish water of the Etang.
But the draw of them is insatiable—
shucked and raw, consumed while they’re still alive.
And trees, too, cut down while they’re stretching out
the sky, their wood logged and milled and sawed.
What they ingrain from staying put in place:
patience in a plank, wisdom in a pearl.
France is known for its oyster production (and consumption). Grown in lagoons, their oysters are considered tastier than those from the ocean.
Staircase of Fonserannes Locks (7)
Malpas Tunnel, world’s oldest navigable canal tunnel
Saint-Ferréol Reservoir
Estate of Pierre-Paul Riquet
Canal du Midi
It takes about two weeks to leisurely cruise
the Canal du Midi from Sète to Toulouse.
And more than five dozen locks will raise you up
and lower you down from town to town.
Thomas Jefferson put his wheelless carriage
on a barge and had a horse pull it through:
‘Of all the methods of travelling I
have ever tried this is the pleasantest.’ True
for us, too. Staking the boat to the bank
and riding bikes to the local markets.
Regional wine, cuisine and pain d’amour.
We had the same fine May weather to thank.
Legions of plane trees line the waterway
and a towpath keeps it company. Riquet,
engineer, banker, and problem-solver,
died just months before it filled with water.
One hundred and fifty miles long in southern France, the Canal du Midi was built in the 17th century to link the Mediterranean with the Atlantic, thus allowing French commerce to avoid Iberian Peninsula pirates. Engineered by Pierre-Paul Riquet, a wealthy salt tax collector who solved the drought issues of the canal by building a reservoir to supply constant water. Thomas Jefferson, when minister to France, journeyed on the canal in May 1787.
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Poetry & Images in this post: © John Delaney
Published with the permission of John Delaney