Morning on the Waterfront

The pilings rise out of the water,
grey as death, moss lingering
as the tide drifts into the fog.
Water laps gently through the ruins.

There was once life here,
Strength and purpose,
fishermen, poets and late night lovers
strolled its boards,

now, all gone with only these brittle stubs left
to remind us of what was,
to help us imagine
what once was.

There will be no resurrection here.
For some there is no coming back.
Abuse and neglect takes us all
without intervention,

and with each salty day that passes,
these relics, like an abandoned soul.
will slowly die. Without romance.
Without reason, battered less by storms, than neglect.

About this poem

Many who are abandoned are restored. Many are not. And for some, there is truly, a point of no return, only survival.

Or it can be about piers. That works too.

Tom