I came close to drifting;

my clothes, hung out in their dull routine,

were lost sailors washed up against the shore—

left out in the rain like scrapyard hulks.

I was raised upon the rust of the dockland,

rivets and steel weighing me down.

Back then was a soundscape of hammering

and mealy food in our mouths.

Music was sparse

and not played by the fat-bellied musicians

that now riff away, in the same bars the workers would retire to.

The houses have all vanished

as they were built on quicksand. Everything there now is glass

forgetting the name of the land.

I remembered how thick the fog could be,

rolling in and erasing the foreshore. Blurring the waves

reminding about sailors longing for their harbour.

Last night I dreamt of the sea.

I awoke with salt crusted upon my skin,

the wind knowing my name, whispering—

we are all voices.

Lee Prosser, Llangynderyn, Wales, An ex-sailor and seadog, 

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