There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune
How true it is
For I see this very day
A plank of wood washed up in Porlock Bay
It bears the name of one John Bannister
A citizen of Worcester he one time
But Porlock is in Somerset
A hundred miles away
What’s a plank of wood
Doing there?
It floated is the answer
Floated on a flood
Along the mighty Severn for a year
Coughed up like Job from fish’s mouth
The plank lay on the beach
Until a tidy-upper came along
John Bannister you’re famous for a day
Memorial bench last year swept away
Found in far off Somerset
Has given up a story
And you my man the subject of its glory
The bench was taken at the flood
And floated down the Severn
And now you are immortalised
I suppose in Severn’s heaven
Brian Fahy
23 April 2021
Erris Poetry 