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She has bad dreams when she moves
into the spare room. She asks questions
about the River Porter, maps
the flat onto graph paper beneath
her temples, she shifts the furniture.
In Estonia her grandmother knows where
to pitch the bedposts, how to avoid
disturbance that shivers from deep water.
Here red chimneys rise
like morning, columns supporting
memories of smoke, the Don split
and hammered to a millrun
a museum, a forged island.
Ear to the floor, her huddle with the boards
returns arid. Taking a rod in each fist
she awaits the clack
of metal nudging metal
the gargle of a buried vein.
She reads Masaru Emoto
through the streets, while fluid currents
in her fingertips. The page turns /
Do it! Let’s do it!
turns /You make me sick, I will Wrinkles in her
bedlinen emerge as crooked
ice crystals, rain persists
at the glass behind her blind.
She murmurs an offering, turns.
There are rivers bound underfoot.
Culverts of tight Victorian brick riddle
below this concrete. A sinkhole
opens a carpark like a shout
a wet gaping mouth
interrupting asphalt and white lines
daylight cuts the exhumed water
glancing steel off a flickering tongue.
The rising is early this year Out-
breaks of rain push East / breach /
remain high in response
to recent / spread in rainwater pushing
against, rainwater oozing
through masonry and this city
is a caddisfly larva
with its silk case of remnants
submerged in ochres, pools of
peat and rust.