Measly Acres

The water is up;
Thundering under the old bridge,
Leaving nothing of the arch
That hides a hundred trolls
Of sleep-deprived nightmares;
Bath time for them.
A boiling soup, rich like rich gravy
All clay and silt and sole-trod leaves,
Left over from headier days,
Rips through, all-a-commotion.
This little brook is apologetic
Most days; hardly there –
Whispering along, behind the row
Of ’60s bungalows, protected
By decorative breeze-block garden walls
And shadowed, sloping lawns
Down to overhanging trees –
Beech front properties no less –
Here, miles from the shore.
The water is up,
Bank-topping, eddies round the oak base,
The dogs’ Convenience inconveniently
Lost, for a while at least;
Pummels through the scruffy shrubbery
Grown long on being out of site
From unquestioning Council mowers.
But where’s it from
All this; all this torment and chaos
And pent up free-flowing anger?
How can it rise
From these measly acres –
From these woods and fields
This thin scrape of topsoil
This pebble bound sod?
Yet it rises, it rises.