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[Unpublished…apart from now]