Fisher Folk Song

The boats of the beach launched fleet
On the beach at the end of my street
Go out about as much as I do these days

Me and the fisherfolk are all washed up
We just can't make it pay
Clinging to shifting shingle as the old world slips away

To quote them, it's quotas that's mostly to blame
In some ways for writers like me it's the same

I cast out my hooks with an elegant arc
No longer expecting the lines to be taken
Nevertheless, while the world is asleep
Out in the cold and down the deep
Me and the fishing boats cut through the dark

To rejig the metaphor, if I were the catch
Then I'm small fry, a lightweight, middle aged whitebait
A fish out of water, a gastropub snack, shaken and battered,
Eaten up whole, a flash in the pan from a dwindling shoal

Sailors rail at larger vessels that dominate the sea
I seethe at the empty ones who make more noise than me

The tide is turning, course is set - commercial trawlers dredge the beds
The AI crawlers trawl the net, scraping, unforgiving.
Artless, heartless, crushing pearls, they hollow out our living

It's in a sailor's nature to be leaving
But the fisherfolk just can't believe in Brexit anymore
They sit by the huts in the sea shanty town (that's a nice line, write it down)

They roll tobacco, brew up tea - recall the one that got away
The great white whale, a big white lie, sold down the river and out to sea

Still the sun rises, we pull up the shutters and set out our stalls again.
Dabs and crabs, poems and plays, Mackerel and Huss, Crayfish Tails
Edit the text. Fillet the fish, feeling the breeze as we flounder and skate

Smiling and waving
Desperately trying
To keep our heads
To keep our heads
Above water.