BETWEEN WIND AND WATER
Don't tell me you don't hear it too. Rising out of sight, it sweeps around blind corners like a noisy broom. Tugs at tangled strings, threatens our torpid silence.
I know how hard it is to draw breath nowadays. Like a beak-held branch, my pencil stalls in the turbulence. Hovers, veers. Looks for a place in some woven nest.
A helm bar forms along the ridge. Rain is coming. Its track is fixed; we can only trim the sails before it is an overhowl. No shelter found in the ribs of a broken umbrella.
You keep saying it may not be so bad; yet spring tides are also lapping at our heels. Get in the swim. Take a life jacket from under the seat. And don’t forget to remove your shoes.
iv. 2024
THE MEETING OF WATERS
Close by that joining, the swamp-dwellers grow:
a grove of young alder.
Catkins – saffron, pendent – are but scanty
shelter from the wettest month on record.
Here, where the Lark and Linnet meet,
we watch their confluence –
a swollen, muddy gluggle jug.
Mull over what each brings, what together
these veins bear away: drainage and discharge,
none of it can be turned back.
Yet this flow is failing; from chalk-fed springs
gin-clear, to tainted last outpouring,
abstraction, impoundment, heatwaves
all inflict some loss.
Still, we hope for mayfly clouds, know
that upstream, in cleaner gravel
lamprey and bullhead breed.
Later crowfoot flowers, also starwort.
The rain eases to a smur. We question
how different future-not-yet-come could be
from one which is no more.
iii. 2024
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