Flood Risk Management Strategy
What if climate change meant turning parts of the city into flood mitigation reservoirs? This poem imagines the result.
I wanted to show him a road I didn’t know was there
that ducks behind Tesco as though to a plant room or store
but winds uphill instead, through trees and sought-after homes
to reach the view I had in mind, a vista from the Gods,
a lake the Committee conjured in haste, swollen now by floods
tumbling off Kinder with little to hold them back
I heard that when August heats up, the bells of Ranmoor Church
ring out, its spire breaching the ripples — and shouting erupts
from the netball pitch where fish now swim through the hoops.
The Rising Sun set long ago but on Tuesday and Thursday nights,
the man with the mic still wants the names of Heaven 17
and the date when the Blades last won the League.
