Green Rock, Winthrop Bay

No lame excuses can gloss over
 Barge-tar clotted at the tide-line, the wrecked pier
 I should have known better.
 Fifteen years between me and the bay
 Profited memory, but did away with the old scenery
 And patched this shoddy
 Makeshift of a view to quit
 My promise of an idyll. The blue's worn out:
 It's a niggard estate,
 Inimical now. The great green rock
 We gave good use as ship and house is black
 With tarry muck
 And periwinkles, shrunk to common
 Size. The cries of scavenging gulls sound thin
 In the traffic of planes
 From Logan Airport opposite.
 Gulls circle grays under shadow of a steelier flight.
 Loss cancels profit. Except you do this tawdry harbor
 A service and ignore it, I go a liar
 Gilding what's eyesore,
 Or must take loophole and blame time
 For the rock's dwarfed lump, for a the drabbled scum,
 For a churlish welcome.