And no, she wasn't really much to look at
In the first place.
But her
Walls were clean and evening
Looked nice on them.
High tide wind ride
Through her gutters and
Marina
Sign.
No, no, there was no garden,
Sparse grasses, this ratty yellow,
And visiting woodchucks.
Lost acorns, just shells,
Caps.
But her gravel path
Was
All in order, you could say,
Whitewashed pebbles, the kind
They must think look nice next to sea,
Because
They're everywhere here.
And what else?
No,
You can't see the sunrise from her windows,
Not the uncharted clouds or spry gulls, not
Much, really
Besides that shipyard wreck of sighing masts, ropes in braids, sails
That rarely come up. But
You can bet the rain sounds
Like diamonds
On her driftwood roof. Those shingles
Have held for a long,
Long time.
And,
Yeah,
Word's going round about
That old Marina now.
Happened in the night, some
Artist chose her to leave his mark on.
His mark...
Hideous, those letters are.
They rise so high up her walls,
And dirty their simple cream.
And God knows they're
Crude,
With jagged peaks and messy lines,
Crooks all over in that three-word sentence.
And no, she wasn't exciting before
Like she seems now,
To the whole damn seafaring town,
But he had no right to do this.
Come in the night and do this.
Sidle up the gravel path and
Kick up grass, and
Shake a can and leave this mark.
No small stroke, not
Some innocent doodle.
His mark.
In code, of symbols
Barely resembling the alphabet. And no,
It's not murder, not
A robbery. She's
Alive.
But the town came out
To hush it up, with
A bucket full of paint
At least two shades off her original white.
But the town came out
For a halfhearted cover up,
And,
No.
It's still not gone.
"Boys'll be boys."
