Mudflats

In a downstream corner of the mudflats
there's a wreck. When first I came here twenty
five, six years ago, it was whole, for sale,
a little bit run down, certainly, but
lived in, they said, although nothing's certain,
that's how she presented, and there were signs,
the gang plank with the light chain stretched across,
and 'though we passed, if not quite daily then
often enough, the place, if not to know
then notice at least, even if we took
no note of who, how many, or of which,
children or adult, or what kind, ethnic,
white Caucasian or what. It held, though afloat,
status as a fixture. The story was
she was a Kirkwall Drifter, one of the last
wooden hulls laid 1920 so they said
or some put later by a few years, all
the same she maintained a presence. And she was,
or became, or how these things happen, the cause
is often obscure, uncertain, contested,
derelict. The sole if it was her sole
occupant found dead of an overdose.
She started to lose the gold first, or rather
more simply the yellow, and the black paint
peeled to reveal black timbers. She settled
lying on one side naked like Goya's
Duchess on her chaise longue. Her decking, slats,
strakes, coaxed open piece by piece to let
light in where ought to be the dark, and no
light matter to expose what ought to be
private, a matter of warmly chambered
purpose, not this tidal ravishing
quotidian beauty of daylight. She's
there still, still at the turn of the day's tide
or the night's, on the downstream mudflats.

                                     Andrew Robinson