It seems that the Sun’s reins have been lengthened,
Allowing it more time in the sky above us all.
I notice this as I walk along my local riverbank.
I meet a tangle of rusted barbed wire,
That sits like a grotesque nest,
All for some horrific animal and its brood,
I leave, lest they return and attack me.
There is no doubt that the river regurgitated it.
When it reached higher than what we like.
These concrete steps and paths, coated with silt and soil,
All coughed up and left by the same river I soon sit beside.
Behind me are the floodwalls,
Thick and Brutalist in design.
Built to protect the homes and gardens,
From being as wet as the nearby riverbed.
I sit next to an uprooted tree,
Almost hearing the roots screaming from exposure,
As they still clutch desperately to the soil and stones.
Not far from me is a mound of garden trimmings and compost,
Dumped over the wall, yet proud daffodils grow from it.
As if to say,
“It is not where you come from,
It is what you become.”
Robert Elliott
Image: Riverside daffodils by David Martin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
