Trawling - a sonnet sequence

Trawling

I

The sun has set, and, now the tide has turned,

The fleet of trawlers sails out from the port;

While from the beach the tourists have adjourned

For lobster dinners, bars and TV sport.

There's melancholy in an ebbing tide

That weakly cannot reach the wave before:

Each waning wavelet further dents its pride,

Collapsing in the slow withdrawing roar.

The wind subsides as if the darkening air

Has spent itself in whipping up the sea

And now, defeated, limply would prefer

Peace, as the moon looks on implacably.

And one by one the stars begin to glow

While, in the dusk, the bay turns indigo.

II

Now sounds and scents waft shoreward from the sea:

The throb of marine engines and the wake

That washes through the waves arhythmically;

The steady, slapping gush as bow-waves break;

The shouts of deck-hands, as they share a joke;

Their laughter; and mingling with stale-fish stink,

The bitter, oily stench of diesel smoke.

The fleet departs, the sea turns black as ink.

Safe in the harbour yachts and cruisers pull

Against their moorings as their ropes defy

The sucking of the sea. The moon is full

And arcing gracefully across the sky

Above the moving dots of distant light:

The trawlers sailing out into the night.

III

Out, far out, beyond the bay, the star-sprayed

Sky and sighing ocean play with the boats

In their elemental sway. Half afraid

They cast their nets like gaping rope-meshed throats,

While on the land the mortal world still sleeps,

Transmuting joys and worries within dreams

As they unconsciously explore the deeps

In darkness never fathomed by moon-beams

Where sleek-scaled, restless creatures lurk among

The rotting wrecks, where tentacle and claw 

 Reach out from under rocks that lie far-flung

Like scattered traps across the ocean floor.

The nets are hauled as hungry seagulls cry

While in their beds the stretching sleepers sigh.

  IV

Beneath a fog so thick that colours fade

To grey and black, the catch is winched aloft.

The trip-line pulled, the slithering cascade

Of spiny fin, shocked eyes, sleek skin and soft

Lean flesh comes crashing to the deck. The haul

Writhes helplessly. Now deck-hands slit and gut

The suffocating product of the trawl.

The fish are packed in ice, the hatches shut.

The exhalation of the plundered sea

Rolls with the rising tide to hide daybreak

From waking dreamers who gaze absently

Through windows blank and grey as if opaque.

The TV weather girl says that the mist

Is thickening and likely to persist.