Surviving The Flood Poem by David Lewis Paget

The barge slid on through the rushes,
Where once was a major road,
And pushed its way through the bushes
Where the ocean had overflowed,
The draught of the barge was shallow,
We could navigate by the shore,
Or over the swampy marshland to
The remains of the Foodland Store.

‘The place is probably empty, ’
Said Rob, who sat at the prow,
Hugging the butt of the.22
That we’d need for protection now,
‘We’ll wait till the stroke of midnight, ’
Said Penny, who managed the food,
And nobody thought to argue,
Or put the girl in a mood.

But then, as we rounded the Plaza
Another barge came in view,
‘That beast is called ‘The Marauder’,
Said Rob, who claimed that he knew.
Then lead slammed into our wooden prow
Their method for warning us off,
So Rob fired back with our.22
To show that we weren’t so soft.

But that was the end of the stand-off,
They’d loaded their barge and were gone,
Slipping away before ten o’clock
With the tide rising over the lawn.
‘We’d better get moving, ’ our Penny said,
And headed off into the store,
There wasn’t much left on the shelves in there,
Some tins, but there wasn’t much more.

‘I never believed Global Warming, ’
Said Rob, as he checked through his list,
‘Who would believe that the seas would rise
Or the end of the world be like this? ’
‘It came on us suddenly, ’ I replied,
‘Too sudden to sandbag the shore,
And everyone fled, unless they were dead,
Up into each mountain and tor.’

‘The cities are all under water,
The water is flooding the plain,
We’re lucky that Rob found this drifting barge,
It’s dirty, but keeping us sane.’
‘We’re not going to last on the food we have, ’
Said Penny, ‘we have to find more, ’
‘We’ll chase that ‘Marauder’, it may come to murder,
But they’d do the same, that’s for sure! ’

It took us a week to catch their old barge,
They’d run out of fuel, were adrift,
And Rob shot the wretch who’d slept on his watch,
Their barge was half jammed in a ditch.
We transhipped the food while the tide was out,
And left with provisions to spare,
‘It’s a harsh, cruel world, ’ we said to their girl,
As we sank their ‘Marauder’ right there.

Our lives will be fraught as we pass back and forth
On the waters that cover the towns,
We’ll have to go diving in Supermarts
For treasures of food that have drowned.
But other survivors are living afloat
Who will try to take over our barge,
The world of the future, a perilous sea,
While there are still others at large.

11 October 2015