The sea pulls..Seagulls lulling me,pulling me I wish I could fly.

Clouds floating, again they are boating across the top of the world.

Trees are free but then I see that they're not..trapped in a plot of the earth,where from birth 'til they die,they only grow to measure the sky and I can't see why I would want to be a tree...but the sea..
The sea it constantly calls me..how I want to...be afloat on the sea..where I could drift on the shift of the tide across the oceans so wide or ride on the tails of great whales and tell stories of storms and of gales.

It is always the ocean that creates such commotion and though I give my devotion she loves only the shore.
I come back..I come back always come back for more..the ocean ..the ocean is the girl I adore.

I wish I could fly.

River boats float along,
up and down
from side to side,
Putney to
Rotherhithe

all this
stems from the Thames
the arterial tree

for the sailor in me the Thames will do
on a flat bottomed barge
muddling through to
St Katherine's and Tobacco dock, to
Tower bridge and make a stop

Ferries and Wherries and
waterways
days on the Thames

making friends
with the mudlarks, the spivs
the preachers, the sharks
all parts of the stem
a branch of the tree

life is for me from
the Thames to the sea.

The Mudlark

1869
The little boy was hungry.
London was not a benevolent place
for the children of the unwashed masses.
The great Queen Victoria was in permanent mourning.
Grief encapsulated her heart at the loss of her soulmate
Her consort her husband and father of her nine children.
Her beloved Albert.

Hunger and cold were striking the young boy
He was an orphan he knew he was seven
but was not sure of any birthdates.
They had found him wrapped in an old coat
On the orphanage steps.
At seven he ran away from the cruelty of the place.
And foraged in the muddy shores of the Thames river.
Finding bric a brac  a medal a coin a piece of jewelry.
In the thick mud that ****** his bare feet deep into it.

He was having a bad day nothing to sell there would be no food
Or a bed he would sleep in the park under the bushes
Until the policeman found him.he would run away
So that he could not be sent to the workhouse.
They made small boys go inside the chimneys
Of great houses to clean off the soot.

Then a sliver of light from an amost hidden moon
It glinted in the mud he rushed over and picked it up.
It was a beautiful cameo broach gold encrusted ivory
A lovely woman was depicted in it.

In his young life he had never seen anything as lovely.
He showed it to the man who buys the findings of the mudlarks
As the boys were known.
He said it is the likeness of queen Victoria
She is the mother of all the British Empire.
He said is she my mother too?
She is everybody’s mother young lad.
He refused to sell the cameo broach.
No it is of my mother he said.

A week later at Buckingham palace.
A great event was held.
He found a wide gap in the railings.
To allow his thin frail body through.
In the bushes he could hear the throng of celebration.
Creeping around he found a courtyard.
A great lady was sat alone on a bench.
She was weeping.
He moved to her she was older but unmistakably
it was the lady on the broach.

She was alarmed as she saw the young said.
Go away I shall call the guards you ruffian.
But I wish you no harm ma'am he said softly.
I found your broach and I want to return it to you.
In the tiny hand he offered the item to her.
She picked it up from him.

This was given to me by my dear Albert.
I lost it overboard in the river Thames fifteen years ago.

I found it in the mud mother.
Mother she asked quizzically.
I was told you are the mother of all the children in your empire.
And I do not have a mother I am an orphan.
The old lady felt tears flowing in her eyes.
Yes I am your mother dear.
The guards saw him and grabbed him
You will get a beating for this young lad
A good beating.
The lady stood up no one shall lay a hand on this boy.
He has brought me a signal my beloved Albert.
It is time for me to return To my duties
And look after the millions of children in my empire.
And true to her word
she discarded her deep depression and widows weaves.
To take her empire to its mst  glorious days.

The young boy was given a job in the palace
And educated to become a fine gentleman
A lawyer who advocated for the poor and lost
In London’s streets.

A thousand unclimbed chimneys but the soot lay heavy on his half starved frame,
and the woman,a name he could not pronounce waited in the darkened street to pounce upon unwary boys and men,
and then the clinging of the silt at low tide on the Thames, where the lens of greedy eyes would spy out,hear the cry out of the mudlarks
but no larking there.
The gears that grind and inner wheels that wind.

Northern towns do not exist
they're just a story that persists in our collective memory,
a nightmare that we waken from.
These mill town dressing gown like nursery rhymes
designed to make us think we live in better times,
wrapped us up in cotton wool.
Until
we were just as full of fear and fantasy
as our collective memory.

Industrialisation was the sow that suckled pigs,
look at them now,
Swines
don't talk to me of better times
don't talk to me at all.

I've survived this long, so long
It can't all just end now
I didn't stay alive for it to be
The end of the ******* world.
But neither you or I can do much else
To save our simple souls
So we'll lie in the grass to death
With Betelgeuse and Mars.
I have a treasure map under my hat
I wonder where it leads
But now I guess we'll never know
So we spin a sorry tale
Of the mudlarks and the moonbeams.