BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

a magazine for the written and visual arts number 1 winter 2018/19

Andy Brown

NOTATIONS OF TEN SUMMER MINUTES after Norman MacCaig

The neighbour carts his wheelie bin, the green one, this alternate Tuesday, out of the alley and into the street where herring gulls fanfare his ritual.

School kids laugh and traipse to class with feet in the shoes of their forebears. In the port the workmen swing their heaving loads of ballast to the dock, where foetid fishing creels and lobster pots sit drying in the sun. Lost sailors’ ghosts evaporate into the air until the moon invites them through the halyards once again.

Down on the tideline, where plastic bottles, seaweed, wood and clumps of net wash up at paddling toddlers’ feet, an ancient couple set up station: tartan rug, a windbreak, flask of tea; the woman floral’d-up in polyester, her husband in his vest and handkerchief, though the pier is nothing but a memory.

Over the grind of waves and dredger’s engine out there at the mouth of the channel, a barrel organ spills unearthly echoes –except it doesn’t – beside the indifferent sea.