The image of a man lying in the bottom of a boat, arms out-stretched and fully clothed…and silent. ‘What’s the matter with him, mister?". There was a quiet wall of arms guiding me slowly backwards up the jetty. He was dead! My first dead man. There would be others that I only heard of. Perhaps his eyes had seen the glory before the crabs got at them. I was too young for all that religious stuff, too young. I rowed a boat before I could read: my father jumping up and down on the shoreline in rage…and pride.
Jimmy Pierce. Jimmy was my best friend. He fell into the sea near Neptune Jetty, fully clothed. Jimmy survived, his wellington boots scooping up the sea like soup. I remember him falling. He lay on his back spouting water like a whale, his little overcoat filling with pockets of air. It was the first time I ever saw Jimmy afraid.
POEM ABOUT THE SEA
Although a hundred people
Looked seaward,
There was a deathly calm.
Death is what I speak of now.
There was a deathly calm
On the sea too, a deadly calm.
The clatter and ding of the arcades
Was drowned out in such silence.
I remember it well:
Those little rowing boats
With their 'dragging hooks'.
I remember it well:
The divers in their rubber skins.
And then a shout
As one was brought up.
He was like rubber, as I recall.
Too late, too late.
I heard that he raised
His head, opened his eyes
Then fell back, dead.
The sea claimed three
On that summer's day
Where I used to play.
No one was there to say no
To that brutish under-tow.
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