Flood Lines

A tribute to the cost of survival

That’s from Agnes, he said,
leaning on his rake,
pride glinting
from between his teeth, pipe smoke
tracing my face with fingers
of charred oak and buckwheat honey,
and we stood there
looking at the bold line
drawn in red
on the side
of the tobacco shed.

I had seen the pictures,
sepia squares from ’72
pasted under plastic
in a thin scrapbook,
brown water and strange faces,
buildings mud-caked
and shrunk,
the lines and the places
that contained our days gone,
roads lost
in a night.

I was young, standing there
looking at a line on a tobacco shed,
and all I knew of floods was
they wrecked my rock dams
and took my boats,
took dead trees and old birds
and boredom,
that their roar left the ground swollen
and the banks skinned bare
and my skin
dancing.

I didn’t know then
that floods take more,
that they take trust and babies,
love and old friends,
tired shrines
and cheap faith, leaving behind
skinned shores,
and that the walls of each life
hold contours of flood lines
traced in red.

I didn’t know the weight
of a high water mark
on an old tobacco shed,
of memories
spilling from pipe smoke,
carried in sepia squares,
these tributes
to the cost of survival,
lines marking
the date and the place we stood,
or let go.

Image Credit: Pixabay