The old stilts creak,
creak and clank
in the water's plump lap,
lipped oysters cling to chafe-legged piers.

The new mirages
of glass apartments,
slouch angular, metallic
and insouciant as supermodels,
upswept on a hill's shoulder
pinned between sky and sea,
the girdled capillaries of lungs,
and the colander of bridgework.

This was a place where criminals
beat the sons of criminals
with socks filled with wet sand.
They still taste it sometimes
gritty and ferric
in seafood lunches.