Flood Alert
The air and earth are full enough of water
for this little town to be a sunlit day’s reflection
of its own original still waiting to be seen.
The meadows may be silvery sheets beside the immemorial
river-crossing, but today that river’s angry
and engaged on some annihilating business
all its own. Elbowing the swans, turgid and muscular
it bears down on the imperilled bridge –
debris from far upstream is wedged against the piers.
A pilgrim’s chapel holds on for dear life.
For life is dear and to be loved in style,
this friendly building seems to say. It’s like a miniature
basilica, a ground of good intent
upon the arch’s crest, a stay against the engulfing tide,
its key to be obtained from As You Like It
Gifts – by customers for whom a reverberating roof’s
a cannonade of rain. Teenagers in the quayside car-park,
replete with popcorn and an alien fantasy,
can dream of realms invisible while they behold an opened lock
absorb the overflow of long-forsaken wells.
Page(s) 24
magazine list
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Lamport Court
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- Magma
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- Monkey Kettle
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- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The