Stranded
Late afternoon, when high tea cleared the sands,
Under the pier was quiet, like a back street,
And out of the sun. You could work your way along it,
Jump the bright stripes from the plank street overhead,
And swing round the huge legs scabbed with salt and rust
And varicose with clusters of blue mussels
Set like rock. The smell of iron and seaweed
Stuck to your fingers.
There were things to rescue:
Lost jellyfish with indigo street-map entrails,
Tiny crabs, fancy as gift-shop brooches,
That cracked and broke when you dropped them in your bucket
To take them back to sea, a long way out,
Where a quick dog flickered along the tide-line
And anglers dug for bait.
It was no good.
You had to let the dull blobs shrink, the claws
Tremble. So jump up, bang the iron-work and shout,
Burst from the cold cage into the sun,
Race to the sea, bounce with the leaping dog,
And then run home, hungry, hungry, hungry.
Page(s) 14
magazine list
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- Dream Catcher
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
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- Monkey Kettle
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- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Quarto
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- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The