rivers – Jovis on a Journey…

In wandering o’er these Staffordshire hills
Hills so green with long valleys deep
Deep below where the waters seep
Seep as rills and streams to flow.

Flow the streams down hillside falls
Falls in cracks from glaciers formed
Formed in Ice Age afore land warmed
Warmed enough for all to grow.

Grow and age in beauty shaped
Shaped by wind and sun and rain
Rain that fills the rivers deep
Deep and flowing to the sea.

Sea surrounds this isle of ours
Ours to love and care for well
Well we may like salty sea
Sea you keep, its streams for me.

Me and all of nature’s joy
Joy for all the world to see
See yourself our tree-filled hills
Hills of home I’m wandering in.

Relentlessly the hard rain falls
Filling rivers, then people’s halls
From coast to coast across the land
Built-on flood plains, foolish plan.
Water’s nowhere left to run
Clearing mud off floors – no fun
Twenty years, no rivers dredged
Agencies failed to keep their pledge
To support environments welfare
I wonder if they really care.

They say that it will get much worse
More than one has left by hearse
Meanwhile winds have picked up too
Downing trees as roofs unglued
Causing damage at bills untold
Premium help-line costs unfold

The political football has now been tossed
As always, it’s the ‘us’ who’ve lost.
Ministers forced into too-late action
Doing it to just gain vote traction.
It should have happened years ago
Sadly it’s how we always go.
Nothing happens till lives are lost
And that becomes the priceless cost.
Somethings that can’t be replaced
Perhaps at last it might be faced.