WWC member Amanda Briggs fancied a trip to the seaside for her birthday – and maybe a dip in the sea, too – even though it was January. So she did. And had a fish and chip lunch at the Coastguard cafe. And wrote this poem, the second piece of work in our seasonal showcase series.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH HAYLING ISLAND?
by Amanda Briggs
Lying between Portsmouth’s spinnakered skyline
and the broad sweep of the Witterings
separated by ruthless rip currents and fast rising rides,
the brand-new four-by-four owners and city dwellers
pass by and ignore
its faded low-level buildings, bungalows and caravans
dismissed to musty smells of neglect, and faded lino floors.
***
A stark January day.
Glassy sea, surprisingly un-grey
pure and serene stilled by the cold,
unpolluted by inflatables and children’s pee.
Container ships slide silently across the eyeline,
watched by those wandering along the water’s edge.
***
Three miles of gently sloping shingle and sand
dissolve into a clear sea.
No thigh-crushing wading needed;
the perfect angle for dipping or plunging,
low tide or high.
Flint pebbles smoothed, sorted and graded
by tidy lines of groynes dividing with geometric symmetry.
***
A step back to the edge of the shoreline
where bramble mounds meet dried seaweed and driftwood.
Sparrows, wagtails and goldfinches huddle and chatter
rising and falling in brief flight, in a collective sigh.
Gulls and jackdaws vie for supremacy
of the beach hut roofs, only leaving for
sporadic skirmishes over styrofoamed fish and chip remains.
***
Funland:
flashes of light and muted sound
from a penny arcade.
Rollercoasters sit frozen still,
metal twisted with cold and fatigue.
A scene from a zombie horror movie.
Dull, drab and derelict; not a living body in sight.
***
Unglamourous, old-fashioned
shabby without chic
boarded up seafront pubs and flats knocked up on the cheap,
memories of when flares were in fashion
protect it from the property developers
with intentions to turn it into
Miami Beach or the Riviera.
***
What’s wrong is what keeps it right.
Woking Writers Circle 