poem for thatcher

CASTING OFF BLUE

for Maggie, past

You turn if you want to, just rejoice in the news :
her death a pied wagtail that flutters iron lapels,
her death announced with footage of eyes like red
iron oxide, the city in grey off-blue pastel
over a Mersey still in-belief it's nationalised,
– as if an idea could be stronger than Doppler –
the tide that knits without formations or structure,
that's the good thing about water, it forgets,
and if we're all – even the working class – ninety
percent water then that's why we should forget,
the wind said that, and the wind had dried-out
the topsoil after months of cold, the cracks without
roots, fronds without barb enough to cut at frost,
and the water was coming now in rain, so much rain,
that without the rain – the water of the workers –
there would be just cracked land & what was poured
into the earth was done so we wouldn't forget, even
when blue iron would soon be punch-holed with worms.

Only those who have never poured their water in earth
would ask us to forget.