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Chris Bendon

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Roselea

A tunnel under the coastal track
(yellow torches in wet secret green)
straight out to

the Irish Sea. Turn and look back:
there’s Roselea, one of love’s
many cabins and bungalows, a thin line

as far as the eye can see. Rusty padlocks,
rusty debris; the usual lightbulbs,
smashed crabs, orange peel - rocks

like rocks from another planet.
No place is deader, this rainy evening,
the more so for being half human:

the grey-green and indigo marine
exceeds any frame of window or mood,
gulls are flung, yesterday’s papers.

But yesterday, it must have been good:
to invest in all that paint and wood,
to buy a playhouse, hideaway, a fairytale hut.

I wish them sun, I wish them luck;
these aren’t homes for the upwardly mobile,
too naive. Let’s go down to the sea, they’ll say,

for whom the only way is down
long years telescoped in a sanded window,
unless they or things look up, not up.

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