Poem 392
This was influenced by a night I worked as an extra on a shoot for a tv dramatised documentary about colonial immigrants … we were in one of the old brick storehouses on Queens Wharf dressed in period clothes with horses and carts … the past felt close …
( I like the image of the moon, hooves ‘startling’ puddles, lantern flames like moths, the rolled white eye of lamb, the rhyme of unbrained cranes and the assonance/alliteration of still dawn derelict wharves … )
King Horse
On the waterfront white plastic teaspoon of moon afloat in a coffee black sky miasmas of last century's cargoes waft across the squid boat lights cutting down hard and white as sheets of paper there's a wind blowing through the bricks shifting straw and dirt over windows letting loose on the plane of air old years old ships old splinters ghosts are cold the wharves always freezing hooves startle puddles flames chug like moths in glass chimneys of old lanterns these are the nighttime hustings King Horse broker of chaff rolled white eye of lamb inside the squat shadow of our first refrigerated ship chilling the green seas to England King Horse dockyard men and shipbuilders the Customs and the empty-handed unmanned unbrained cranes grappling their shadows together on the still dawn derelict wharves here and now is when the bodies come in