Letter to Maryport NaPowriMo Day 20 - Epistolary poem (I think)

Letter to Maryport

Dear Maryport,

I love your sea-whipped streets

the evenings of enforced Bingo silence

in your Old Folk’s Home

the crunch of our sherbet

heard above dobber concentration.

I love family walks on your sea-wall,

we don’t notice the odd syringe

suggesting a less than perfect life

for some.

I love all the patties – potato/meat/potato

battered and fried

and free bags of greasy fish bits and salt

The breathlessness after the climb

of

Market Street

to see Great Aunties.

The call of the slot machines

and grass sleds of Silloth

a walkable distance of seven miles

felt much longer

with the hindering assistance of sand.

A donkey ride on Allonby beach,

“Avoid stray land-mines”

say the signs.

We take our empty Barr bottles back,

claim the penny for each.

We ignore the people combing the beach

for this avenue of income.

Now, when I go back to your seashore

I notice poverty the young and protected me

never saw.

A desperation in the coddled eyes

of the last old men who used to work the sea.

epistolary poem - day 20 NaPoWriMo  Sarah L Dixon - quite notey at the moment!