Last Heron

As the last heron goes, rooks
fall from the sky like old black rags
to carpet the new-laid field.
____________________Six days
now, six days and nights
without rain falling.

We feel reprieved, for all the sullage
washing through thoroughfares,
grey-brown, dingy, dismaying.

Journeys are slow, and everything
boots clothes wheels mudguards
silts up, as we edge forward.
___________________Strange
how little it matters, this besmirching,
that once would have made us think twice.

It is enough that we can go forward,
enough to watch the land-birds
wheel down onto clear earth, peck
where crops once grew, may grow
again. As now seems possible.

__________________We wake, amazed,
from a long dream of drowning.