Dungeness

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

abandoned on that beach; haunting that huge cove;

rich history, like in so many places, fading away

rotting, rusting, ruined