BRIGHTON PIER ON A RAINY DAY... (AND LUANA ASIATA'S PAINTING...)

 Brighton Pier On A Rainy Day…

(A poem written in 2004 but Luana Asiata’s painting reminded me of that day…)

Like a wispy tendril of smoke

Blown in a fanned spiral

By a tetchy breeze,

A murmuration of starlings

Seemingly as one,

Rose, disturbed from camouflage

Above the skeletal remains

Of a once proud pier,

Rusting, cowering, fractured.

Its form misshapen, its colour gone…

Like a cable-car, stranded

On some remote slate-grey slope,

One small wooden hut remained,

Perched incongruously yet piously upright

Upon the tangled, arthritic frame.

Its paintwork seemed undisturbed,

Surely waiting in vain

For an ice-cream vendor maybe,

A ticket-seller or fortune-teller,

Or did it simply seek someone to blame?

Like rags once worn

By victims of disaster,

Shreds of netting 

And slices of linoleum hung

From dismal windswept steel.

Torn and disfigured metal lengths

Of a once solid structure

Clawed from the dull ocean,

Like blackened remains of trees,

Rendered by shells at the Somme, surreal…

Like a sentinel, the folly remained,

Weeping its salty tears

For the life-blood of laughter,

Music and conversation,

Footsteps, scoldings and screams,

As evening’s curtain began falling

On another silent, lonely hour.

A chilly winter sunset appeared

To breathe salvation onto the monstrosity

And bless the isolated hut with orange beams…

Pete Ray

Brighton Pier’s predicament when I saw it in 2004…