WHAT WAS ONCE

Just before this second lockdown we went to Wedmore for the night. Wedmore is on the edge of the Somerset Levels, a particularly flat area, close to sea level. 

When I lived in Somerset I was always conscious that, not so long ago, this whole area had been tidal marsh.

I think it was this that sparked the poem.

Auger

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. 

I suppose the song should continue the water image.

Here's Spirogyra [the English freak folk band not the US jazz funk combo].

And this is The Wreck of the Hesperus by Procul Harum.

Until next time.