Submarine Graveyard

From the road you see them, blunt hulks hemmed in now by flaking barges,

redundant landing craft, the ground that has grown around them a pelt

of rosebay willowherb and rutted, oil-stained grass. De-fanged, stripped

of their deadly burden, they kilter at a lean. Anything of value’s been plundered,

conning towers gutted, wiring pulled out like so much spaghetti,

decks ripped off and trucked away. Only the dense, immovable hulls remain,

subsiding slowly into mud, the land healing over them, a new peninsula inching

into the bay; though their kin still plough the seas

or lurk unseen, their payloads simmering with readiness.