The Wharf
Brian Sokolowski

The clock turned over its face and showed me the time; day half-past, twelve hours more to go. I take my lunch in a box and go to the wharf. Here there is no harbour, there are no boats lined up in wait, sitting calmly in the wading bay like perfect school children, attentive and alert. All that is here is the rippling tide of the clear water glass bay. I sit and I look outwards towards the world. I see beauty trembling like the lips of a lover’s softly waiting kiss. Wounded by the eastern shore, a front of land stops short the water’s reach. Multi-coloured stones sprayed across the smoggy dirt; it looks like a city of earthly toned race. Speckled like fish bellies, they lie quietly in sombre sleep for the cruising tide’s embrace; they will be swept away into the cradling sea, and lie to rest their earthly fears. Birds and gulls flutter about in rushing flocks of tens and twenties, gliding gently along the tepid, moistening air, and break water like sharpened glass. From here they look like ice skaters, dancing like pallid dreams through the rising mist of the slipping white skied bay. My front steps out of doorways from my house lead me here. I search for a purpose; beauty and grace. From all ways do the sun and sky collide into misty rains of rainforest clouds that swirl above our heads.

Let me describe this place: I am sitting and smoking on an upturned log washed in from the sea, strewn across a great stone block of recycled cement lain down on the skin of the earth. Wires poke their noses out from the cracks in the stone. There is an absence of sand; so silly for that to be here. Instead, humble reeds bend down their backs, and bow their heads to the ground, reaching with finger tips across the stony shore. They look like hay fields in a wind storm, or mops left out to dry; they push themselves down and look like humpbacked waves. A plane pulls up its wheels and rumbles in its flight as it sinks into the greying sky. Wood logs shed their skin and lie naked on the earth. To my left is a quarry of stone; they sit on top of each other and make faces at the ground. There above the water’s gape, a mouth of rotting piers, like browning teeth, swallows up the stretch of shore. A bridge clings to either side, and with Atlas strength, bears a load of walking feet and rolling wheels. Above my head black silhouettes of birds trace patterns in the sky; they shoot themselves east. To my right is the jutting line of coast. It spreads its fingers to the sea, asking for it to join. One of the gulls, whom very much I would like to be my friend, scampers joyfully across the sheets of water, and skirts wildly with glee a finger’s breadth above the rushing tow beneath. To my back is a rabble of dirt, torn up; roots peel their way through, and spring from its breast. A barrier for tempered winds, its life protects the beach.



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