ON THE MOOCH.

There’s a name scratched on a bollard between Prince Street and Welsh Back.
It was scratched there while the boy was hunkered down;
With his back against some dunnage, roughly heaped up in a stack;
Quietly listening; to the rhythm of the town.

As the shipping and the dockside and the city’s cadence formed,
Unique music, that would stay with him for life,
The boy crouched down near the bollard, where the winter sun had warmed,
And shaped letters in the paintwork with his knife.

The old Prince Street Bridge swung open, on her greasy quadrant track,
For the Camerton, (her belly full of sand.)
With her steaming foredeck winches heaving in the head rope slack,
While the Dockers stood in small groups; hooks in hand.

They’d be heading ‘round to Wapping Wharf,: astern of Kitsa Dan,
There’s a Baltic boat, with timber piled high.
Silent iron cranes stood ready, ‘Stothert Pitt’ stamped on each span;
Grey Mecca no sets, that poked holes in the sky.

Sirens echo’d up from Hotwells; that’s the Juno’s strident call;
Warning merchants: ‘There’d be cargo in from France.’
She’d be mooring up at Prince’s Wharf, along the harbour wall;
Where the Stevedores would dance, the merchants’ dance.

Mid-day clamour came from ‘E’ shed, along St Augustine’s Reach,
From a Bratt boat, stem to stern with Bristol Steam;
Hogshead barrels, slung from derricks, rose with Dockers’ coloured speech;
Dublin’s Guinness and España’s Bristol Cream.

The boy wandered past the Dockers, with their Woodbines and flat caps;
Pausing at a favoured place on Narrow Quay;
Swinging feet on puddled water; (making patterns with his daps
He was dreaming of the day, he’d go to sea.

At the Tramway Centre’s fountain, under Colston’s iron gaze;
He sipped water, from a brass cup, on a chain.
Neptune, contemplated traffic, funnel’d in from seven ways;
Canned emotions, twirled.!! Then siphoned off again.

Brandon Hill drew like a magnet, but the docks had staked its claim
When some ripples on the water took his mind
Soaring out across the oceans; he heard Circé speak his name,
And of mystery and adventure he would find.

For a while he dreamed of tall ships with their rigging and white sails,
And he felt the warm sea breezes on his face
As his muscles stretched in rhythm with the South Atlantic gales,
While the seagulls swooped, and joined in with the race.

Distant clock jacks broke his daydream, banging hammers on the bells,
Christ Church medieval clock was marking time;
Filing dreams away for future use; he headed for Hotwells,
Down through Anchor Road, past grey stoned, Gasworks’ grime.

On the jetty, down at Canon’s Marsh, before the railway track,
He stood ‘golfing’ pebbles with a piece of wood;
As the Arklow, (out of Glasgow,) black smoke oozing from her stack,
Went about her sooty, coastal livelihood.

The chanty voice of Bristol that ‘bends canvas to the breeze’,
Stirs the spirit Brunel used to forge his fame.
From a murmur where two rivers meet, it’s heard through seven seas,
Marking history with its fashion and its name.

Brazen clatter from Hill’s Dockyard, (as it shuffled plates of steel,)
Reached the obelisk to Cabot on the hill;
And the ancient timbers creaking when they laid Great Western’s keel;
Well: the boy was sure he heard them creaking still.

Dodging railway trucks and traffic he sped down to Howard’s Lock,
For the view along the Gorge, past Abbot’s Leigh;
From the Cumberland Basin meeting point, where ships and seamen flock,
Where the muddy swirl, took men away to sea.

Ships were lined across the Basin, silent engines standing by,
While the lock gates played Canute with rising tide:
When the Custom’s manifest was signed, and signatures were dry,
The old Harbourmaster let them all inside.

One by one ships left the Basin, heading deeper into town;
First, the Dija, inward bound from Kristiansand;
Then the Baltic, with more timber, she gave way to Harry Brown,
And the Lapwing, followed by the Memelland:

Last of all, another Bratt boat, and the Cato steaming south;
Then the spectacle and movements fade away:
After waiting at the swing bridge; buses head for Avonmouth;
Reluctantly, the boy went on his way.

Tucked away inside the Junction Lock, at Nova Scotia Place,
Are small pleasure boats that, don’t go anywhere.
Chained and padlocked, they lay motionless; within their stone embrace:
But the drinkers get some pleasure standing there.

Time seemed faster near the sand dock, where the Sea Gem and Sea Queen,
Berthing opposite the Robbins timber yard,
Blended pompous little whistles with the screeching saw machine,
Lending urgency he couldn’t disregard.

Racing past the Nova Scotia, with the sun across his back,
He dap’t along The Cut, toward Albion Docks;
His stick rattled on the railings, satisfaction in each whack,
Caught the Mardyke Ferry to the Flying Fox.

Looking out across the water from the little clinker boat,
He stood, with bare legs braced, against the thwart,
In his mind: Salt water glistened on his yellow oilskin coat,
As his windswept ship berthed in a foreign port.

Now: the ‘ocean voyage’ over, it was time for heading back,
Along the road to College Green and old Queen Vic’,
Hot feet pounding on the pavement, (mind you don’t step on a crack..!!)
Where he left the old queen’s statue with his stick.

Pelting through the Tramway Centre, (there’s no trams there any more!)
Then to Broadmead, passing Bridewell near Pithay,
Home in time to hear his mother, as he’s walking through the door,
”Hello my son!!” and, “How was school today..??”.



Reg Kear © Australia 1992