Grandpa' Shack

Poets post their works-in-progress here for crit and commentary. We want poets who are serious about getting their work published.
Post Reply
Message
Author
FredFourth
Posts: 117
Joined: 29 Oct 2015, 22:25

Grandpa' Shack

#1 Post by FredFourth » 17 Nov 2015, 18:23

Like a book of remembrance
pages - pictures - colour - monochrome
a video of violent action
some better to forget

Dock Road
tarred canvassed boards
pierhead buildings
shacks smell pitch pine
clean like love
Timber washed up on the shore
from a force ten gale

Long passageway
between paint and pop store
harboured spiders black as ice
framed by a tiny window
Grandpa watched their entry

The general office warmed by a cast iron stove
none but foreman, ship owners
captains and engineer-surveyors
lounge here

Quadrant of the general office
a door that always closed
by gravity, silently. A Victorian desk
a chair that moved on castors
with squeak - a slim glass cupboard
containing coin-sized mass-produced
discs wrapped in gold foil
soft to the touch

A mariner's day bunk took
the length of the office
slim mattress, narrow
enough for a child

Dad attending ships berthed
in the sprawl of docklands
He lay on the bunk watching the
kiosk through a mirror
set at a compound angle
He sat in Grandpa’s chair
wrote longhand in blue-black - red ink

Sold chocolate to matelows
Fanta Orange to riveters
condensed milk to girls
in print frocks who smelled of
soap who ruffled his hair and
lingered wanting more than a chat

Sold shag tobacco to pipe smokers
chewing tobacco to silvered men
who operated hydraulic gates
around the tides.

Two hours before and after
the twice a day tide. . . moving back
one hour each day. Their hours rotating
like the endless, restless tide

He lay on Grandpa's bunk, listening to time
tic slow and mellow, yellow with age
Rats beneath stir like those above and keep low

He wondered if they missed
Grandpa of whom he could not remember

He kept the heavy cut-glass ink pot
savoured its ruggedness
set it on his study desk

Post Reply