Of Peasoup and Piracy: (Butlers Wharf Winter 1962)

I have an investment here
over the knots of a century
it's bound around the fraying years
on a cleat of memory

so loosen time and pull boys
flex the sinews lets heave away
there's cowboy hats from Patagonia
oiled guns for Mandalay

my uncle a scab in sixty two
in the days of whores and heresy
the price for bananas and grapefruit
was pea soup morning pleurisy

today there's just Ikea and halogen
new paint for this old estuary
the pushing tide and daybreak
ghosts this wharf of history