'COLLAPSING IN PORTHLEVEN': A NEW POEM ABOUT CORNWALL...

Collapsing In Porthleven

It was rather like when the gardener returned from lunch

And the wobbling, uncoordinated Bill and Ben,

Not to mention the neurotic Little Weed,

Simply dropped forwards into a state of collapse

Until the gardener went away again

And it became safe, it was assumed,

For the trio to jerk to life once more beneath visible strings,

So that the unintelligible ‘flobadobs’ were resumed,

Translated by a woman who surely made it all up

In her BBC accent, just making a hunch…

And so it happened in Porthleven,

As the harbour’s sea receded with a whimper;

Moored vessels, having bobbed and fidgeted

Upon a late June tide

Simply leaned sideways and eventually slumped,

Awkward, helpless, hapless and quite uneven;

Rope lines and loose fittings clicked their anger

At the ignominy of listing to one side

In glum mud, like hulks abandoned and dumped,

Until, naturally, the turning tide

Would lift the boats once more to a gentle, rippling pride…

Pete Ray, in Porthleven,

July 2019…

I watched the fleet of small launches and vessels drop uselessly sideways in the inner harbour, as the tide receded and it reminded me of the BBC children’s TV programme, ‘The Flowerpot Men’.

I should maybe get a life…