{"id":6372,"date":"2016-06-10T14:53:32","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T13:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6372"},"modified":"2016-07-25T09:37:47","modified_gmt":"2016-07-25T08:37:47","slug":"she-lay-down-deep-beneath-the-sea-meditations-on-dunoons-victorian-pier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6372","title":{"rendered":"She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea*: Meditations on Dunoon’s Victorian Pier<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

1
\nI am bound, rooted, salt-stung,
\ntree-limbed, iron bolted.
\nI live with my memories –
\nechoes of footsteps arriving,
\ndeparting; ghost boats
\n      at my thighs.<\/p>\n

Every timber part of me swims
\nwith zooplankton. My only neighbour
\nis my reflection. The sky
\nis sailing around me.
\nFenders of rock elm protect me.
\nMy mouth is a softwood deck
\n      of pitch pine.<\/p>\n

I’ve been here so long
\nliving out my days in this estuary.
\nI am locked in a blue room –
\nthe summers of my childhood
\npressing down on my skin;
\nI am up to my neck in tide.<\/p>\n

2
\nThe pier is a series of joined-at-the-hip bodies.
\nThe pier is a timber tongue flying out of the Firth.
\nThe pier is a woman on her back; fog-clouds –
\nbed-sheets, pulled up over her head.
\nWhen the pier opens her legs –
\nit’s a window to nowhere.
\nThe pier drags her bladder-wrack
\nand dabber-lock body through spirals
\nof underwater currents.
\nWhen the tide falls the pier floats ashore
\nlike a battered toy.
\nThe pier is breaking apart.
\nHer legs are a row of piano keys
\nplaying in A minor.
\nThe pier is sun-aged and storm-scarred;
\nshe has seen many departures.
\nThe pier is an arch of hysteria
\nholding her secrets deep in the very girders.
\nThe pier is tired – looking always across the Firth.
\nShe sits in the shallows, among rocks,
\nher back bare – tubular spine, a hint of ribs.
\nShe remembers the names of her Steamers:
\nMeg Merrilies, Jeanie Deans, Heather Bell<\/em>.
\nAt the end of her life
\nthe pier has leapt off of herself
\nand is simply floating in the water.<\/p>\n

3
\nWe will always return to the pier –
\nshe is our end point, our home.
\nGrey seals and bone whales
\nsing songs of her water logs,
\nsalty in the brazen sun.
\nNo Steamer comes to her now.
\nThe shoreline is carved with the facade
\nof her wooden sisters –
\nthe remnants of cast-off piers.
\nShe is half-dressed in a shock of fronds
\nand bladders; she is barnacle-legged
\n      and limpet-cheeked.
\nShe is our night constellation on the Firth;
\n      our lifeline and lifetime satellite.<\/p>\n

4
\nAt the Opening of the New Pier, 1898.
\nShe absorbs the sounds of the rabble
\ndown to the very core of her timber bones.
\nTheir voices preserved in the lichen
\nand limpet shells beginning their slow journey
\nof attachment around her plump new legs.
\nVoices to be held to the ears of children,
\nyears after those voices have stilled.
\nYou, on this new pier can never leave,
\nfade, never age, enter war. You
\nin the Glengarry bonnet, flat cap,
\ntop hat, bowler, ribboned straw hat
\npresent at the birth of a pier under bunting
\nand flag poles have become her story.
\nAbandoned woman of pleasure, daughter
\nof stillness – the end that comes to us all;
\nwhere are your people now?<\/p>\n

*title from a drawing by Tracey Emin<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 I am bound, rooted, salt-stung, tree-limbed, iron bolted. I live with my memories – echoes of footsteps arriving, departing; ghost boats       at my thighs. Every timber part of me swims with zooplankton. My only neighbour is my reflection. The sky is sailing around me. Fenders of rock elm protect me. 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