Clare Kirwan: Poet with painting by Pauline Murphy

love new brighton - © Pauline Murphy

 

New Brighton, 1978

So easy to find myself there –

every hill led to the edge of land.

I’d freewheel without thinking

grey brown river. It meant nothing

to me, yet I sought it out –

it’s brackish solitude and always

the wind – sometimes a howl

you understand, sometimes a sob.

All the wrong way around. I was

too young for such nostalgia

but Seasons in the Sun

stirred up my teething soul.

Those were the days

of blue anorak, battered,

big glasses, briny,

bad hair tattered flags.

The prom was then, as now,

unlovely and all at right angles –

an expanse of pavement, lampposts,

railings, concrete wall, and then

the pirate fingertips of Irish Sea

hypnotizing, enticing me

to that churning horizon.

And going home seemed further

than the journey out had been.

So easy to find myself there,

then turning, realizing the wind

had been behind and pushing.

Head down, salted, gripping handlebars,

fighting back weather and inclination,

thirteen and against everything.

        

©  Clare Kirwan

From ‘Sculpted’ anthology of North West Poets to be launched in April