The Flood

It descends in copious volumes
insistent, conspicuous 
and intolerable. Dark at mid-day 
an all-encompassing fog 
of grey mantles the landscape. 
Its opaque screen washing 
colour, objects and sight-lines
into obscurity. We become fatigued 
at the endurance and range 
of the downpour, drowning
our spirits in a miasma of despair
imagining the landscape 
dissolving, the soil carried off
into an ocean of rain
possessions destroyed
people carried off
homes ruined, entire towns 
abandoned to the unstoppable
excess. The future in abeyance 
as all about us becomes
beyond sudden, bedraggled
 unfamiliar and haunted. 
And still the rain descends.