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Dungeness
copper burns across an endless sky
competing caws claim salt, surf and sand
sailing high above slowly sagging carcasses
long forgotten at the edge of the world
buckled rails swim over a shimmering shingle sea
the largest of its kind, hinting at some other time;
engines once chugged to billingsgate from this beach
herring bound for the cinque ports
and they say women dragged each boat -
pulled them down to that shore’s faithless embrace;
the muttered prayers of mothers and daughters
casting their men out on fortune’s dark waters
now nets, set for a tide that came and went, lay
mouldering among those collapsing clinkers
as if the fisherfolk just left one night, fled
granting the gulls sole control of that desolate dominion
their toil and trade, the legacy of our fathers’ fathers
still lays there on that beach; haunts that huge cove
rich history, like in so many places, fading away
rotting, rusting, ruined
Copyright ©
Marcus Whitnell
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