Meditations On a Derelict Wharf

The tide worn and barnacled pylons holding up the wharf wobble on a sea swell like loose teeth. Most of the decking planks are missing. Those that remain span joists with bones of rotted wood fastened down with rust. A chain wire fence bars public access and a large red sign screams a message of danger. I find myself looking through the wire, asking who else would stop by and perceive a strange beauty here, that in the wreck of this derelict wharf, something immutable has found a home in the rot. Its history is not mine nor does it conspire with a notion to snare me with a kind of enticing nostalgia. What is here is more like time chewed pick up sticks stuck in mud. And yet I don't know why I am moved so, standing here with all the reverence afforded a relic of something almost holy, why my pen should waste time chasing such an elusive presence around a page. Perhaps what is here is an essence of what my mind cannot grasp, that other, a mystery imprinted on a finite world, a longed for sign of hope in a language known only to the soul - or is it simply something more mundane, slowly loosening the pylons holding up my brain.