11 May 2012
The Wastwater Incident - a dark fantasy based on real facts about the Cumbrian Mere
Wan and weedy, dark and vast Wastwater drains the peppered scree The deepest English 'lake' endures The climate's pinch and touristry.
Just shy of eighty metres down The currents shift the bearded bed; A denser shadow percolates The quilted silts with lonely dread.
Innocence should flood this trench, A glaciated rest for rains, Frigid peace in autumn's blaze A water heart in venal lanes...
Yet, dusky mists hide mysteries: Why is swimming, boating banned? Where are all the larger fish? Why plunging eddies far from land?
Divers once made gardens here, Metres down, with gnomes! The wags! But diver deaths soon ended this - The gnomes removed in weedy bags.
What caused the deaths, no soul will tell. Nor fate of missing walkers known. The anglers' rods found on the bank. The floating mess of skin and bone.
No bird will settle on the brink. The ducks all vanished late one spring. Locals dreamed of soulless eyes, Beneath, a house-sized mouth is opening. -------------
Sellafield is across the way And uses water from the lake. Decommissioned, reactor cooled, And witness to a grave mistake;
Gallons might be pumped away - But what if something filtered back; Some Fall-in leaking from the core, Infecting lake through hole or crack...
Wastwater's silent. Geese fly south. The drizzle blurs the surface glass. A beachball bubble billows upward. Water churned by moving mass.
I court the papers; One More Lost! I leave my clothes beneath some rocks And brave the yawning water's chill Wearing nothing but my socks.
It's not the gaping winter lake I ask to swallow my despair - I want their ravenous mistake To want me, like I want to care.
I shudder, panting with the cold With deadened limbs, the swim is slow. I wait until those eyes, that jaw Rises from the dark below.
The Wastwater Incident • Opuss № I