Looking Down the Years

From his sheltered spot on Clodgy bluff

He’d seen it calm and glint and rough

White horses raging lashing rocks

Or lapping softly past the docks

The night Welsh Trader perished near

Her decks awash with foam and fear

The rocks claimed lives and skin and bone

And the newly-widowed drew close at home

For the jubilee the pageant lasted days

The silver sea’s reflective ways

Highlighting polished hulls and bunting high

Atop masts reaching for the sky

Commercial glory too had its day

When the shoals of cod and haddock paid

With their lives to nourish our ill-fed ranks

All offered praise and grateful thanks

The dreadful spillage killed all that

The catches went from feast to flat

Sea birds all manner of life went down

In that insidious oily spreading gown

Time the healer refreshed and cleaned

But the delicate balance of nature seemed

Forever shifted from the accepted mean

And devoid of the life which once had teemed

The tourists come now in their hordes

With modern craft and chamfered boards

Swim, paddle or ski and ride

The phlegmatic sea takes it in its stride

With winter returns the solitary walker

Gazing out over the crashing water

No visitors now, no slick or screams

Just the old man of Clodgy wrapped up in his dreams