CRABWISE

Crouched around the rim, in clusters,

kids with buckets. Wordless,

I watch a tussle of wits.

 

They’ve come equipped, these hunters,

brought string and safety pin.

A bolt becomes makeshift sinker,

 

and bacon is saved to bait

their bottom dwelling prize.

Stalk-eyes see the would-be catch,

 

alert to a murky rip-off.

Risk is palpable, approached

through stealthy pincer movement.

 

Two schools of landing coexist:

some jerk and swing, flailing

in search of an instant answer,

 

others draw their lines patiently

by inches to the surface.

The day’s take plays scrabble,

 

captive in some plastic prison.

Canoe Lake strollers pause and peer,

in a barnacled mantle

 

make out the moon’s crust. Maybe.

Or count lost legs of veterans -

regrown at moulting season

 

like veins around a tumour.

Afternoon, and ice-cream,

bring this contest to a close.

 

Tipped out across a concrete page

my jottings scuttle to the edge,

spill over and sink without trace.

ii.2002

 

Away With Words, Portsmouth Poetry 

SHIPPING MOVEMENTS (Portsmouth – Isle of Wight)

Embarkation:

“Go now while you can” toilet trips,

and pointless rummaging

for items unlocated,

pass the queuing time.

Cycles racked and bungee strapped.

Roofboxes. Caravans.

Waiting on drivers and their rigs,

phalanxes of freight.

The sweet fume of petrol

undercut by salt tang.

With evening, clouds close in

and neon rips the broken light.

Gulls bicker for scraps on tarmac.

For twenty years my father came this way

watching warships, noting their numbers;

through cold war to détente, and back,

naming the gunmetal greys:

British towns and Greek goddesses.

On a ship’s rail leaning, looking back,

I fathom their allure; picture

his teenage ear lent to a crystal set,

construing the enemy:

Graf Spee, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Tirpitz.

He never went to sea: signed up

to navigate the skies instead;

was transferred when gliders flew no more,

and ended up in Varna, spying

on a Black Sea fleet at anchor.

Decades on, like some ghost of a frogman,

rudiments of Russian picked up then

found recalled usage, translating

the Hammer and the Sickle,

when Obraztsovy was in port.

Daily ferried by three sisters -

Southsea, Brading, Shanklin - and bearded

in naval fashion, he stands:

pint in hand at bar, sustaining a sense

of other tongues, other islands.

Cast off and underway:

tricolours and Union Jacks,

grubby both, flap loosely.

Cranes salute, point skyward

alongside missile launchers;

who, fresh back from the Gulf

triumphant but empty-handed,

line the wharves.

And now gulls crowd

the detritus-churning wake:

in our turning manoeuvre

rich pickings, below the surface.

vi.2005