Christmas in York has been a terrible time for many people; as it has for lots of people in the North of England. We count ourselves very lucky not to have been flooded, but the images of my home town under water has insired the poem below.
Flood by Gillian Byrom-Smith
Water laps,
licking, gnawing hungrily at all in its wake.
A beast awoken,
leaving a swollen devastated trail.
Lives float past in disarray.
Tears flow,
water forces another channel
through desperate lives.
Sky noisy with circling helicopters,
like huge metal dragonflies
hovering over unquiet ponds.
Sandbags piled in ungainly walls,
boats rove streets between submerged cars.
Christmas lights tangled and torn
amongst sludge and oozing earth.
Carpeted stairs leading
into dark, icy fathoms.
They escape for now
to tell the tale of lives ruined.
Tight knots of sheep huddle
on ever decreasing parcels of safety.
We watch like voyeurs
on the edge of our own abyss,
waiting for an ark.