Panmure Basin
 

Was this basin ever clean and pure?
Stones walls surround it now.
Pylons stride past a sprawling hotel,
as mangroves make their slow assault.
Cracked concrete pipes drain city scum 
on to the grey, brown mud 
where crabs scuttle, stilts stalk 
and still life herons prey.

But the basin holds one secret,
a deep green vein
connects it to a riverfare
and somewhere out to sea 
the signal's given. 
The flow floods back,
past the commorants nesting in the pines,
under the high suspension bridge 
and fast across the flats,
the shining sheen deepens. 

I've seen the basin blue and laughing 
at optimists chasing the summer breeze.
I've seen it shiver, whipped by autumn rain.
Every day its filth's exposed,
slime on the rocks in the stream,
but unfailingly it's filled and cleansed,
faults forgiven, ugliness transformed,
and I envy this battered basin
its link to the spell of the sea.
 
 

Andrew Charles Dallaston 
September 98
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