Nick Mulgrew
Receding now, the floodwater masquerades as ocean.
Every day the intertide rises further, approaching
the horizon in a parallel band: the coast is leaking grey;
even the dullest shades of blue desert the ruined bay.
We are surrounded by our surroundings, the foundations
now walls, the walls something else – rubble-cairns briskly masoned
and idle, memorials of brick immemorial.
Mangled fingers of rebar grasp from a rain-quarried hill
to the taunt of a fresh-sanded sky. A jumbo rakes by,
banking west, then north, to another where, another why.
Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 3 November 2022