I   The Museum Curator Greets the Dawn

At nine, I switch on our TV dawn:

the South Wales Transport video game;

Treasures from our Archive (on the blink)

showing some shipwrecks before going blank;

a potted history of the mineral trade

with dotted lines across the world;

and then, my favourite, a timelapse tide

breathing water in weather-wide

and out of the harbour. And then I switch

on haulage engines for the delight

of watching the piston elbows rise and fall.

Precision makes work as musical

as any orchestra. Then I stand

on the model bridge and understand

a museum’s museum is being alive.

Quiet please, madam. Yes, we close at five.