The Sunday Poem: The Overload by Simon Armitage

I should be out there again,
 fixing the ozone hole
  with sealing wax,

Canuting the rising tides,
 keeping the polar icecaps cool
  with a damp cloth.

But on this day –
 most days in fact –
  it’s all too much.

I’ll loaf
 another hour
  in this beachfront shack

watching the fire brigade
 in their flying boat –
  coward-yellow, inferno-red –

doing training drills
 and dummy runs
  in the mouth of the bay.

Wherever it kisses the waves
 it drinks from the sea,
  then climbs and pisses

a glitter of false rain
 onto make-believe flames
  and never misses.

Simon Armitage is the poet laureate

See also: Introducing The Observer's Sunday poem

Illustration by Chris Riddell