Four Inch Day

The girl with polka dotted wellies
      is shin deep in garden
cavorting in a pine bark sea
     because under the tip, flip, drizzling
it’s a four inch day.

My plastic tablecloth billows
         and the carpark's running downhill -
 gravel rush and mud skin...
            and there’s the bob-gloss of umbrellas
     and a three foot leap with shrieking
                    across one-time-only creek.

             Gumboots and bare feet and 
the squelch of sneakers over-wrought 
    because today the world 
has come up gull-risen and dripping 
           merging grey. At the tips
     white bones, skull to the wind
          feather-combed in the draw of air.

Follow the sky snuff’s
         wheeze and splutter as it
  drags down trees and drain pipes
until trawling streams
              weave patterns in the dirt
   around your toes and mine,

We’re in it together
        snap-hooded and flushing
and the cold swooshes in
  so we hug tight in table cloth
tartan, wet to wet and giggling.
      Nose seep, damp feet, underneath
a plastic sheet on a four inch day.