The Pier

 

What else to do         between the storms

but go down to this        short road of departure,

 

wondering who            were the poets of the sea?

Mackay Brown, for sure.      Longfellow.

 

Baudelaire, once in a while.        And a few

who'd travel down                for its calm days.

 

The sea; a salt north wind:      a brief but sure

compendium            of every reason

 

that trees won't grow here;            that the church took root;

that the song-folk           slip off so early

 

on the same light raft                they travelled here on.

Better to be               a poet of the land.

 

Here we're left            with the stiff buds of seaweed;

a bloom that's promised        but that never opens. 

 

Exchange Street

 

Blue ambulance lights beach against the streetlamps.

What a night to depart, with the first storm

of winter still a day from breaking; and the town's

palest girl due to wear that reddest dress

she wears so seldom. Just imagine,

hung on to hear, perfected, from the window,

as the sleet falls, that hush in her red wake.

 

Outset

 

Who else awake when Watson Street doesn't run

between our Station Road and Berry Drive?

Pitch black and birdless, windless and without

its here to here,

                           as a last by-way on a map

that's found diminishing on a low hearth-fire,

joining nothing to nothing's upper lands;

on it a footstep will thunder like a drum. 

 

In Praise 

 

There you were, farrier and blacksmith,

who if called upon would have

gutted the house for metals, every

lock and moth-hinge.

                                   The high tide of trade,

the toughening and night-work; shaping

your loved materials - horse-shoes, pins,

those small weights we fastened at the breast.