The middle is deep with the tide out.
On the near side staggered mud-flats,
oil-smooth and metallic. By Bellurgan
an archipelago, colonies of herons and gannets.

Today knife-billed waders with chicks
scour the Navvy bank: a runnel
of sludge with a car-axle, rusted machines,
a swivel chair turning on its black spine.

Swallows whizz in across a tidal gust
to the grey-green triangle of Tippin's wood.
A raven, Odin's bird, watches from the wall.
The bay is unhindered to the gas terminal

all red and mechanical. The town's waste
collects at the bank in a bone-white drum,
behind it Jonesboro Hill where Romeo
Two-One looms like the Eiffel tower.

Here we watched and were watched.
Now the watchtowers are rattling and closing.
Stray corrugated sheets flap by the breakers,
filed like the former skyline of Manhattan.

I am on a seat of remembrance for two
who drowned within sight of this point,
lighting the river-lights. I smile at the yellow
of a Bellurgan pub called The Blue Anchor.