Anti-Rain
Charm For The Island
Let the winter it drenched be redacted, forgotten,
No more sandbags, or gasbags in photo-op
poses;
Let no gutters be gorged, let no soffits go rotten,
Let no downpours rip petals off poppies and
roses.
Let no soakings doom gardens to weeds’ hypertrophia
As the clouds keep the atmosphere dank and
crepuscular
Making rain-sodden hollyhock, lupin, kniphofia,
Really moist and attractive to all things
molluscular.
Let no drowned island towns turn to parody-Venices
And sites long submerged by a liquid
Vesuvius;
Let the summer be free of all water-linked menaces
Like the sewage that spills through excess of
the pluvious.
Let some mitred Archbishop, some modern-day Druid,
Prepare sky-clearing rites for a national
assembly
If there’s need to control any fast-falling fluid
Before genuine dives please the public at
Wembley!
Jerome Betts
If you have any comments on this poem, Jerome Betts would be
pleased to hear from you.