Lake in Flood

As I stand, lakeside, they sweep past me
like floating funeral pyres under sun, destined

not to burn, mangled tangles of twig and branch,
chestnut-brown, piled high on soil-stained water,

some sticky with stubborn tickets of green leaf
clinging like bling, some cut skeletal, stark-barren,

by this current from the flooding river
folding into this lake, slowing into submission.

Amongst the pyres, less impressive flotsam:
assorted plastics, rafts of vegetation, multitudes

of miscreant objects defying identification.
A shopping trolley leans sideways in shallows—

debris held fast in its mouth, cheating the checkout.
The migrating procession of wreckage

glides past; both inanimate and defiantly animate,
once elsewhere, secure, assured,

now to be dammed and likely damned,
fated for chipping, recycling or dumping,

or left to sink, diffuse, pollute, or bond
with the lake in an uncertain future.

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Tony Steven Williams is a poet and short-fiction author from Canberra, Australia, with many publications in journals, anthologies and magazines. Tony’s poetic output is intentionally diverse both in format and subject, and he loves to wander between shadow and sun, considering this a reflection of our rollercoaster lives. However, in all his work, the environment and the human condition are very important to him. Tony has two poetry collections published by Ginninderra Press: Sun and Moon, Light and Dark (2018) and Reimmersion (2023).