Poem for the Port of Vitoria

Cargo was all you could think about; the sheer bulk of it
and how it came between you and all other
thought that day -
mechanical ballet, you called it:
how the tall, up-standing gantry cranes
swept the tonnage of home-grown grain
high over our heads
or maybe they were marionettes -
skeletal metal on ropes and wires controlled
from a place unseen.
Whatever they were
it made you want to second-guess
the storage of un-stuffed volumes -
bulk traffic outward-bound;

this hard endeavour every day
to simply feed the world.