One year here.
I watch the camelias bloom again,
and sorrel opening in the rain
as the roosters and hens continue rooting under wet duff.
There is enough garbage slippage near the Douro to murder a whale.
The homeless have been moved.
One guy now camps inside a battered garden shed,
another nests himself at a tipping point
on saturated ground that will kill him if it fails.
I wonder if he worries at all about that.
A rat has crept out of the rain,
crouched under a dry ledge at the busy bus stop.
No one gives it the slightest notice.
Worms flooded to surface rise from under sorrel.
Drenched camelias bloom.
Blooms as brown as the rat lie shivering in the rain bogged dirt.
All this is ordinary,
as ordinary as the garden warbler
that greets me here
high above the earth,
on the roof where I live.
The warbler suddenly flits off,
remembering to be elusive.
Perhaps it's met the rat, or the men below, who have told it how
it is best now
among us
to remain invisible.
Dec 4, 1:38 PM (3 days ago) | |||
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