Die Back by Gram Davies

Over ale, he tells me, 

Ash burns wet. Downpour. 

Trains in disarray, villages 

silenced. The English seem 

forever unprepared. To reach 

a bus stop needed waders. 

A website showed you 

how to spot the rot: patches 

in bark like porter soaking

shirtsleeves; twigs’

black fingernails bared

above canopies. 

We fought flash floods

on roads which closed like zips 

behind us, to this inn fire 

under these ceiling beams. 

Some things appear changeless;

we have no tales of tomorrow.

But in lanes, overhung by ashes’

banana-bunch branches...

a creeping flame. Another ale –

he tells me there were fewer

floods, back in his day.

Gram Davies, England