Coal House Fort
Turn the mud. Bo Peep’s head tumbles out,
wide-eyed, mouth a little open.
There’s no sign of her body,
her crook, her flock. Perhaps
they’re deeper in the riverbed,
or washed down to Tilbury by the tide.
Drop her into the wooden trug
alongside three musket balls,
half an upper denture, endless
bits of lustre ware.
The boy I was, who crept through
the dark, unsecured passages
beneath Coal House Fort
would have reached first for the musket balls,
felt their dead weight in his hand,
thrust them into his pocket.
He’d have poked at the denture
in thrilled disgust, perhaps thought
of that glass by his Granddad’s bed,
the thing floating there like a broken clam.
Bo Peep he’d have left in the mud.
Nigel King lives in Huddersfield, UK. He has had poems published in Poetry Salzburg Review, The High Window, and Algebra of Owls (amongst others). His pamphlet What I Love About Daleks was published by Calder Valley Poetry.