Low Tide

Low tide river reveals... a bit if beach, exposed
where waters hemline laps on sandy skin.
Mud flat rivulets from outwash drains
splash surfaces to cellulite, etch lines
of broken veins that trace a thigh.
You're looking old, my love.

Cigarettes butts, torn papers, blossoms,
confetti your breasts, celebrate a joining
with towers, new apartments which
hold and penetrate your shape.
A reduced river, giving favours
to passing acquaintances,
morsels brushed from tidal gowns.

Gulls are playful wayfarers, terms curious,
but other eyes are watching, avaricious -
the steely high billed stares of cormorant and heron -
who wait for quiet moments, stab the prize.
Flotsams gossip in the backwash of a lock,
by a canals arm pointing inland,
fingers adorned with lilly rings.

Oiled lipstick smears the river mouth,
a poison decoration where hungry tides
lick timbers to dental decay,
bricks to blood red marks round standing stones,
memory of rituals some long dead cult once practiced,
revealed as jetty remains,
bottles, clay pipes, coins are anecdotes.

The swelling currents of a turning tide
slips foam on naked banks,
covers marks of harsh attentions,
rise up the corset walls constricting an ebullience_
once spread from Brixton up to Ludgate hill,
(and may again). Boats bob, swing sea-ward,
reflections shimmer and pulse.
You shine in evenings finery.