The Sand Fulmar
Squat, the flat shade of sandflats,
docked west of Woolwich,
the Sand Fulmar waits
to be emptied:
of silt, of erosion, of friable sand
bled down to riverbeds:
a mobile geography,
that’s shipped from estuary to factory.
After twelve days
all the grains are spooned
clear of the hull,
crowning a huge mounting dune
crawling up skywards.
Tonight,
the full hull of the dredger
is heavy as a river:
the Thames elbows its flanks
and streams on.
A school of orange buoys
winks, as the high Thames churns
seawards:
burst flowers of lights
bloom and split
while the tide plies the currents:
but the dredger won’t budge,
absorbed with its load,
silt
hoarded up to its gills.
Two big cartwheels of paddle flats
with rough shovels attached
plunge deep under water,
hauling murk
from slowed sand-banks,
brackish juice
spilling down
the chins of the buckets,
free to flow onwards,
tugged by the moon.
Here, near the river’s end,
soft, migrant grains
will bed down in darkness,
a promiscuous mingling
of mica and silica,
of small bones and smashed shells,
of beachglass and rock quartz,
with sandworms,
with seaweeds torn up
from their roots.
Once the huge tube is screwed
into place
evacuation is started,
the granular cargo
parcelled along
a once-cream-painted
busted and rusting conveyorbelt
twenty yards high,
to dust the new landscape
that mounts up behind
the locked chainlink fence.
In the factory of aggregates
tall vats of spent oil
stand by shy growths of ragwort
or rosebay willowherb,
the sharp tang
of coaltar staining the air.
These are the journeys
of the slow hearts of rivers
turned stubborn with silt:
dredged clear, transported,
they will curdle in bitumen.
Sealed drums of asphalt,
stirred into pitch and mixed up with sand,
wait to be fired,
to be laid down as roads.
Page(s) 5-7
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The