BOILER ON THE BEACH

A gigantic wheel of steel, sitting on the shore,

As waves are lapping, a boy stands staring,

Made tiny by the vast bulk of its rusting hulk,

And sailing ships blow by, shunning and mocking

This engineering of their own demise,

This once mighty beating heart of a broken,

Forgotten long-lost battleship

And my boy grandfather

Taking pictures of ghostly shadows

So many years ago

How on earth did it get there, and where on earth is there?
It can’t have just floated in on the tide
The hundred-ton flotsam of some naval skirmish
From those bloody brutal maritimes
Did it merely roll there? Running away -
The last remains of a once-proud hulk stripped
To bare bones and less all around it

And my boy grandfather

Taking pictures of ghostly shadows

So very long ago

I can see that it’s a ship’s boiler, I know this from my books
Ghosts of other tragic steamers, born in a golden age
I can picture a teenager standing wet-footed
A box brownie held to his weak eyes
Capturing a moment, creating a mystery
A fleeting image of a tale it cannot tell
Where was he, and when, and what?

Just my boy grandfather

Taking pictures of ghostly shadows

A hundred years ago

Martin A W Holmes, June 2015