German Aircraft Found Exposed in the Wash Copyright © Richard J Whiting 2012

Quite a crowd had gathered;
They were stretching tape around it
(Something about bombs)
Talking of how the sea
In one of its revealing moods
Had unveiled her again.
It reminded me of the beaching
Of the Sperm Whale;
Were more people here for that?
Certainly, there was a man
Walking about with a sketch
He'd made, the part you could see
All bold and heavy,
That which was invisible
Represented by d-o-t-t-e-d l-i-n-e-s-

He was saying something to me
About the fuselage, the pay-load
And what amount of something,
The size of somewhere
Would be blown apart
If the bombs went off.
That they hadn't bothered to do this
In seventy-odd
Brine-soaked years, it all seemed
A shaggy-whale story.

We decided to leave,
The dog and me,
And anyway, he pointed out,
The Sperm Whale had smelt much better.
More like lunch.

By now, the man
And a guy in a grey coat,
Were arguing about salvage;
Digging out the wreck
And sending home its bones
Or leaving nature
To heal the wound
Like trenches on the Western Front.
The dog and me, we favoured the latter
Though we weren’t overly concerned.

What really worried us though
Were the kids
Running around the tapes,
Arms outstretched like aircraft,
Shooting each other
With drift-wood guns.
Laying dead on the mud.