Antediluvian?
written by: Stephen Kingsnorth
‘I knew you’d come, He told me so,
though family was not so sure,’
but shore is shifting, waves goodbye –
there’s timber shiver, groan as lift,
and Noah’s ready, ark befits.
‘I have the power of life and death,
as drink for crops or dehydrate;’
but ‘Take a raincheck, wait awhile,
until the cats and dogs have passed?
A raven, dove my messengers.’
‘A seasoned traveller of the world,
I currently flow where I’m willed;
I’m drawn above, accumulate
then concentrated drop again,
by taproot raised in xylem flow.’
‘So seep and trickle, sodden peat,
I fall to earth where fall again
in torrent, chute, cascading spray
as salmon leap, throw selves at me
and trout glow rainbows, water paint.’
‘Downfall for proud, for trappers, pelt,
I mizzle, drizzle, soak the skin;
though humans damn me, swear my worth,
they brick me in, for know my power,
a reservoir to feed the grid.’
‘I daily cry on plastic waste,
drip, though the butt of many jokes,
from cloud to freeze and geyser gush,
antediluvian I worked –
my finest hour, that deluge burst.’
‘This is my life of cycle sport,
break over rifts and joining race
through cataracts which none can see –
they suck me in and spew me out,
this earthly kingdom where I reign.’
‘Is all the effort down the drain,
that flood, the rescue, all the pain,
that humankind should start again,
abusing world by ways inane,
our planet marked by human stain?’
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – A Conversation with The Rain
