Waterlines
Cast-iron plaques, and chiselled arrows
on the sides of bridges,
under the eaves of houses.
Lest we forget
wide-eyed children plucked
from trees like fruit,
in shivering downdrafts
and a clatter of helicopters.
Kitchen units oozing slurry,
skips of rancid sofas, leaking fridges,
curling laminate and lino,
mossy shagpile rugs.
Who remembers the silence of flood,
the pulse of fat brown rivers
quiet as elephants, bloated with swallowed fields,
with diesel rainbows, slowly spinning trees?
Who remembers silence by gossipy streams
full of the small-talk of stones?
[Unpublished…apart from now]
sad
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