Author Information
Lowther's Pond
Lowther's Pond
A myriad Damselflies once danced there
dreamy hours were transfixed by their shimmering colours,
putting rainbows to shame.
The pond a bright mirror of the aerobatic courtships,
and the headlong hunting of midges.
The water was stirred by: breezes, coots, frogs, whirligig beetles,
pondskaters, thirsty housemartins, a myriad hungry tadpoles,
or the warm weather baskings of the minnows and the bleak.
They‘re all gone now and the pond mirror has dimmed,
stagnant, airless, shadowed and stinking,
with shimmering colours, the rainbow films of shame,
and all this in the name of progress.
The new greenfield factory that grew in my teens,
bankrupt, windowless, a vandal‘s own heaven,
will soon be destroyed,
but the filth and the oil and the poisons in the soil,
will outlive us all.
