The narrow footbridge still straddles the mouth of the river.
An old sleeping centipede reaching out from the sedate sandbank.
Its wooden legs dark and rough from an age of licking waters.
Its tail buried into the sand, as if by some mischievous child.
Many of my childhood days, and nights, revolved around that bridge.

Hurriedly removing our shoes at the entrance,
We ran barefoot over the washboard wooden slats,
Diving feet first into the delicious golden grains.
The bridge was a conduit to a fantastical world:
Leaping from the reed-crested dunes,
Digging large, pointless holes in the sand,
Collecting razor shells and muscles at low tide,
Diving into the waves on the North Sea side of the beach,
Or cooking sausages on a driftwood bonfire on November 5th.

In the summer months, we dared each other to jump from the bridge.
Teetering nervously, we perched on the highest of the wood struts,
The adrenaline rush of anticipation compounded by the plunge.
Gushing out of the chilling water, life became more intense:
The bitter salty taste of seawater ran from our lips,
The rank seaweed smell permeated the atmosphere,
Our skin coarsened by the peppering of sand granules.

We would camp out on that bridge in the evenings,
Armed naively with our fishing rods and rusted spinners.
There we would stay late into the moon-bright night
Transfixed on the unconcerned river, tense with anticipation.
The only thing we ever caught was the clinging pungent 
odour from the mackerel bait.

Many of my childhood haunts have since been consumed.
The wild wooded expanse of Tarzan Land up on the hill,
Where I frequently fell from a tree or was stung by an ambush of nettles,
Now razed and given over to a new housing development.
The old railway station building, boarded up and forgotten for years
(Although we all knew it was haunted!)
Now, replaced with a clean council leisure park.

But down by the waterfront, where the swans drift elegantly by 
And the occasional cormorant preens her sleek feathers,
The narrow footbridge still straddles the mouth of the river.