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.