BRIGHTON WEST PIER
Last week I saw it again, staggering
like a shot beast in the high tide,
the pavilion a skull half sunk, gnawing
at its stilts. A telephone receiver swung
from the tangled guts of the bar.
Of course I have witnessed dereliction before:
mantelpieces three floors up,
the remnants of passion fluttering
in the torn wallpaper of virtual rooms,
the cross-section of intimacy.
But this reclaiming by sea of our
tentative steps leaves me
precarious: those Saturday nights
when I would catch my breath outside
its stuccoed façade, stilettoed,
tiptoeing between strips of sea foaming
below, a note from a saxophone
thrown to the wind, hearing his voice
on the line half a century ago,
still swaying there.