Dirty Union

Dirty union

Beginning with a confluence of forces,
La Nina’s warm fat seas playing tricks,

mother of all wet seasons in the not so sunshine state,
throw in a cyclone, hammering rain

on sodden ground, refusing any more drinks,
swollen tributaries, groaning banks

straining to control the heaving flow
of brown water and detritus.

Vigorously crushing all resistance,
the gargantuan river has its way,

bursting the banks,

pounding onwards, urgent but clumsy,
wild strength of river water, penetrating

barricaded suburbs, love-tidy homes and gardens,
shipshape business precincts, offices and shops,

revelling in the strange, the new,
devouring all with fetid breath and force,

yanking the hair of things long envied and despised,
floating restaurant, yacht, insidious walkway,

stripping away all fight with muscle and mass,
the power of the taking, rank defilement

of victims, punch-drunk on mud-scarred earth,
bereft and huddled in disbelief.

 

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ps. One of a series of poems about the great flood of 2010/2011 in Queensland, Australia. The first in the series is In all Innocence.