Instow and Appledore

The beach, sand in our driving shoes
Men and boys wrestle with a sailing boat
The tide is going out
Boats sit on keels

The Old Yard is gone: only the
grey gantry crane
and the large side wall remain.
The quay sits solid against the race
and houses ride up the hill
The tall stone church sits beneath the brow

Children play makeshift games of cricket
with parents. A plank of wood for a stump
the tennis ball bounces away
Fetch, boy. Fetch

The neat cream houses replace the boat-yards
An anchorage bereft of salmon boats
a car-park where the tide water
pool had stood. The missing shelter

The bulge in the wall where the oak trees
roots had threatened to burst the boundary
Grassed-over graves, missing jars
a white board with a red thermometer
Ornate marble monuments in the old
new headstones on the other side

"The Lobster Pot": baskets, nets and green balls
and cheap evenings of poetry. Dogs harlequin
through the water and the sand, nosing beach-balls

The grave. Second hand Cornish granite on a concrete base
My grandfather, grandmother, granp's twin, aged 4
Dad digs out a weed with a penknife
I push back the wild garlic
it's long green stems and pale silver
globes loll at the edge. You replace a stone.

Turning away Mum says don't bury me here
Here the graves where the Captains lie
beneath a broken spire and a Swiss Cottage

Follow the tide-mark across the fine pale sand
come across misshapen smooth wood branches
a support for our garden arbour

Up there, behind us, is the darkest edge.
Over there, by the defunct Church School
is where smoke billowed and smothered
below us is the vestry door by the shadowy corner
cut-flowers and white ceramic beakers
the lead water-tank guarding it's deep dark pool
above me a contracting white coin
I thrust my hand in yours.

Here we jump the stream of water that escapes
from the sand-dunes, the Royal Marine base
and the empty cricket club

Above us, the white light occults
over the phantom grid, the missing pier
the lone white house on Saunton Sands
the cold wild coupling of rivers

We pick at the lead-letters on my great-grandmas grave.