What of these pillboxes long emptied of their guns and men in tablet hats?
The pocked golf ball of nuclear containment, squat Martello Towers,
the levees, seawalls, boulder-block defences,
lattice pylons, communication masts? What of the bird-hides
with their flapping windows or the stilted platform
refuge from the tide? The gantry cranes in lines like birds around the harbour
lifting coloured bricks of cargo from the ships,
these old buoys tied to stakes for firing practice, the piers,
the groynes, the barges sunk to break the water? So many
lighthouses already come and gone – and the last
surviving cast iron leading lights, standing firm though long past blinking?

The Roman chapel looks across the low peninsula.

What of the factories, windfarms, bridges, tidal barriers closing their slow teeth?
The beach huts, caravans, white knuckle rides? What of this bench
that faces towards the sea, flaking paint and in memoriam?