its nearly the end of the world
we wait in the flat lands
word may come in days, or weeks, or never
that the water will return is certain
rolling over fields, obliterating streams
dykes will yield, roads disappear
once all this was not ours
but living memory is too short a span
we think we know, we do not
but the eels remember
as they slither through the wicker traps
what was once, and will be again
The end of the world reference could have been to the coming lockdown or the American elections. In a way it doesn’t matter. I’m not sure how I chanced upon the eels, I’ve used them before as an image for something that is hard to catch. Still two poems in six years hardly is a theme.
And this is The Wreck of the Hesperus by Procul Harum.
Until next time.