#amwriting #poetry #poem 3am

3am

It is always the heat and the grind and the salted smoke
of cockles on the mesh, raked in parody of the crashing waves.
Their tongues hang, circumcised, like tired dogs, as they roll drop-ward
to the waiting drum. Pumped arms delighting at the back and forth,
a sweat dripped cigarette hanging, half smoked, tasting
of tar, and the darkness beyond the open shed lifting like sand in a glass.

Outside the ring of heat, cold wet morning
clutches it's arms to it's chest, breathing in the canker of the river.
A stiff knee'd old man is how that day comes. Stiff knee'd
and rising from his hard backed chair. It hobbles in
on clubbed feet, toes gripping at the new-lay
as old blood finally flows across the slashed sky of day.

First the green light and then the red, bobbing then chugging,
then throbbing a timbrel beat, and with a clanging bell
in comes the catch. Around the boat's wake swoop gulls
darting to take the spoils, that spill from the laden nets on deck.

Leaning on the rake, I pat at my pockets for matches.
And in that luminescence of phosphor
I notice the spire of St Margaret's outlined at last.
Two more tons to go, I think,
as I set myself once more to work,
with a satisfied pinging crunch of shells.