Flood.(Poem)

 
FLOOD 
 
   Last night rain begged, badgered 
   to enter my room, share my sheets. 
   I heard it ramming itself into the hole 
   in the guttering, felt it sink the garden, 
   drown pale hundreds of spread 
   sycamore hands and I knew the stream 
   in the park had swollen to a busy tongue 
   greedy for grass. In the dark of my head 
 
   flowered that first environmentalist, 
   Noah, who rated the world's species 
   highly as family. I saw him cooped 
   with milk-heavy cows, the mustard heat 
   of lion, pestered by droves of fearful voices. 
   Butterflies speckled the wooden dimness 
   with yellow, bee humming rose from the ark's belly. 
 
   When blue squeezed between the clouds 
   the old man climbed to the third storey 
   where owl moons and pigeon beads 
   lit a windowless attic. He lifted down 
   a dove and, mobbed by anxious relatives, 
   sent it into a cauldron of light. At last 
   he lay on the new green world's solid body 
   under a stretched ...