The clanking chains haul the boat
Into the seaweed-strewn, slightly stinking shore
Where a fresh line of anxious drivers wait
Strung along the narrow causeway
Like a scattered, broken necklace.

She listens to the scrape and clang
Beating like the tattoo of her own heart.
It amazes her this punt-like thing
Always stays afloat, carrying its cargo of cars
Safely back and forth each day.

Such a flimsy, flattened object
Ought to go straight to the bottom.
She wonders at its technical gravitas,
Running for decades without a glitch,
As it has done perfectly satisfactorily.

Without it, they would all have to go
The very longest way around.
Annoying, and probably more expensive
At today’s prices, which explains the queue.
She knows why everyone is grateful it is here.

Just a small crossing really,
A few hundred yards across a natural
River ravine between two headlands.
One of many crossings she has taken
Traversing this inlet-riven land.