Poem

Llandudno

Rigged with a sea-shawl of twilight and mist,
The refurbished eighteenth-century boardwalk
Emptied of its visitors, the souvenir stands closed down,
And like the currach housed in a local museum
We toured that day, its broad-planked floor strained
Against the anchor of its history. But no telling

What prospect the mind beheld, or the body
Remembered, to find itself wrong-footed and alive
To four or five skinheads stepping from the stairway
By a tackle shop, their forearms barred with swastikas,
And embedded in the leather of their combat boots,
A cross-hatch metalwork of razor blades.