once I was chest high to the granite lipped
ornamental ocean but now the puddle barely scrapes my shins
and, while a brass band sounds and the fountain tries to drown
it’s leggy boatmen, Victoria frowns, like of old, at the memory
of extinct gilled gold replaced by layers of spectered petiole

“don’t stop me now” jogs the brass for the coital dragons who,
pollinating invisible waves, are red today
they must have come from Wales
and the mother Trent is speculum still sliced only by
the splitting sculls and the splashing spratted steps of silver sinew