InterBoard Poetry Competition

BY THE BEACH
      George Brew
      (The Critical Poet)

In Folkestone by the beach, two old
hydraulic lift cars with a long reach

and the rooms built into cliffs
and roads that zig-zagged left
to right turned stitched and switched,

and something called Old High Street with
a cobbled humpback and two flat
drains each side looking neat as well as beat,

And by the sea-front mollusced in the corner,
dumped shells from the fish stall rolled within
the tide stroke pull and pinch, the tide rolls

take an inch, and as we left the contest band-hall,
sun smote on the wave fall,
dappled, looked a bit like ships or maybe France,

and glittered on the instruments
and glistened redly in
the sky like bandsmen’s bruised lips,

or a dismal sigh; a sad eye;
lost whist for things long missed;
sea kist; or a blue sky; blue sky.