Après

When the flood waters left they left
the pine boards cupped; the plaster blistered
with salts; the cheap chipboard
bursting out of its laminate jacket
in all the kitchen units; the electrics wrecked
with the wires firing in the sockets;
the polyfilled cracks in the buckled doors
once more agape; the iron grate sporting
a hem of rust and the ash it contained
arranged in a scum-line above the skirting;
dampness, months-deep, fattening the pores
of the brickwork; a question-mark over the slate floor
the oven fouled; the fridge unsafe; the whole place
humming with marsh rot and fetor
but the garden, the garden good, and greener
for an alien crop of hogweed higher
than us, hardy, sturdy, hirsute, armed
with a poison sap against expulsion.