a curve, drying, loops into the harbour
from the old light, passing in front of
the newest pier, becoming
part of thin flowing sea crossed
by a van and pulled boat;
near the aged wood jetty or breakwater,
a lugger rolls; black sodden posts breach
its background; a dinghy puts out from
the littery side; wake of a tourist boat
curling north by north-east;
yellow moil below The Warren;
around it, darkening blue
ultramarine almost overexposed
burning beyond Porthmeor,
toys and bright tools in encircled sand;
gulls, alighting on rutted wet,
dabble in the leaking Stennack
which separates to thin rats’ tails each unfinished,
rhetorics of decay, and many
floating things leave indefinable shore
the pier line wanders a little
as lanes do, changing course,
like a tree root
recording past condition
a gallimaufry of building
rounds quietly in front
of raw loud green,
glowing
[From The Malakoff, one can see both sides of the peninsula called The
Island.
Porthmeor (literally big landing place, “beach” being redundant) is on the
other side of the small peninsula to the harbour; it is a popular beach in
front of the Tate; or rather the Tate has been built behind it – on the
site of the gas works
The Stennack is a withered river which goes underground just before it
dribbles into the sea out of a hole in a wall near The Warren, a very old
part of the town, around the very old parish church]
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UNFRAMED GRAPHICS by Lawrence Upton
42 pages; A5 paperback; colour cover
Writers Forum 978 1 84254 277 4
wfuk.org.uk/blog
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