Inundation

The puddles never really go away. All through the desiccating summer’s sun, they wait patiently for a sea-change, for the slow turn of the season, or a fortuitous sudden torrent, to brim them, even briefly. Their stock in trade is patience and versatility; in drought they make collections: dusty dirt, cigarette ends, sweet wrappers, the disarticulated bird bones of roadkill, ironic plastic drink containers. Stoically, they persist, always there.

I walked out yesterday, finding a lull in the rain, which lasted until I reached the shops. Puddles full; puddles shore to shore with battling concentric rings from fellow drops, late to the scene. Roadside puddles edging towards their kin, striving against the press of passing tyres to link rivulets across the central lines. Lawn puddles, forming mini lakes, grass stems pushing round their rims like mangrove in miniature.

Across the green they link their limbs; become seeps that beget trickles, trickles forming streams, overflowing the beck. Water plays its own game outside the puddles; tumbling down to seas where sun and wind begin their play anew.

Water reveals all the old puddles, like friends forgotten in fair weather. A monstrous on-road, off-road carbon oxidiser visits the long puddle by a local hotel and its waves wash my feet. “Muppet” I cry to his oblivious, receding tailgate. I look down to watch the waters refold, reflow back into their temporary sanctuary, wet fingers grasping into cracked pavement, washing back to await the next car, or the tide.