Awash

I have a friend in Muchelney, the Somerset village

cut off by flood water for the last four weeks.

She was surprisingly sanguine about their plight and

talked of the community spirit and camaraderie

that had blossomed in the community.

Their only way out of the village is by a boat 

that operates an hourly service in daylight.

The rest of the time she dons chest waders from

the local fishing shop where only the larger men's sizes are stocked.

Thameside properties have also been inundated.

In a weird moment of synchronicity if not solidarity,

(my feet are quite dry after all)

I found myself reading Elizabeth Taylor's

The Thames Spread Out, last night.

Rose has been sequestered in an upstairs room

since the Thames broke its banks.

The sun was beginning to set and she knew how dark it got these winter days. 

She took her cup of tea and went out on to the balcony to watch.

Every ten years or so, the Thames in that place would rise too high, 

brim over its banks and cover the fields for miles, 

changing the landscape utterly. The course of the river itself she could trace 

here and there from the lines of the willow trees or other landmarks she knew.

Beyond, on what before had been the other bank, 

a little train was crossing the floods. 

The raised track was still a foot or two above the river level

Puffing along, reflected in the water, it curved away into the distance
 and disappeared among the poplars by the church,

There all the gravestones were submerged, 

and the inn had the river flowing in through the front door and out the back.

'Thames-side Venice,' a newspaper reporter had called it.

The children loved it, and now Rose saw two young boys rowing by on the pink water.

The sun had slipped down through the mist, was very low,

behind some grey trees blobbed with mistletoe;

but the light on the water was very beautiful.

The white seabirds scarcely moved 

and a row of swans went in single file down a footpath 

whose high railing-tops on either side broke the surface of the water.

Rose sipped her tea and watched, intent on having the most of every second 

of the fading loveliness - the silence and the reflections and the light, 

and then the silence broken by a cat crying far away 

or a shout coming thinly across the cold air.