The jetty is deserted in the sun. Warm light
streams to the river-bed, catching
the lines of feeding fish, bright
on the warm sand, seen clearly through
unruffled water, their movements matching
the slow currents, threading the new
growth over tyres, cables, cans, all shown
lying still in growing weed, changing fast
into the stuff of the river. Bars of gold sun
fall on them, holding the shrimps, the mussel shells,
the lives all overlooked. Martins dart past
to their nests under the boarding. The morning smells
of sea air, and new-mown grass, as ripples run
on this calm day. Even those cans and tyres
are full of life, each harbours its own crew
of living things. Ripples like cool fires
wander the sunlit surface, lines blown
by some unfelt wind. At the shore a few
people are wading. A few dogs and children run
on nearby grass. Over its little commonwealth of lives
of the hardly interesting, the marginal, the small,
the hardly beautiful, itself part of them all
and happily ignored, where so much thrives
the jetty stands deserted in the sun.