Wayne King, a NL artist from Shoal Harbour, NL, now living in Fort McMurray, drew this picture and wrote the following poem entitled "Stranded On A Slabpile." It's excellent for your magazine. Hope you use it.
I sat on sparkling waters,
On crisp November mornings,
Sun playing,
On my taunts, risins and gunwales
An old piggin’ rolling on the floorboards,
As I rock gently to the motion of the sea.
Mooring slack, coming tight, slack again,
So peaceful, so quiet
Sound of ocean on shoreline.
Only broken by echoes from ashore,
A hammer, load of lumber, axe to wood.
Smoke rising gently from rooftops
An outport coming alive as I rock on my moorings.

That was a long way from this old slab pile.
How long have I been here? I don’t know.
Every now and then I get a whiff of salt air
If the wind is right.
Sometimes old fishermen happen by,
Put their gnarled hands on my gunwales
Or sit while the smell of pipe fills the air.
They say,
“It’s over, never the the same again,
Those were the good old days,”
They say.

I sit here while the rain washes me,
The sun splits my planks and peels my paint
The wind blows gales around me, covers me with snow.
Hour after hour, day after day, year after year,
Until I become part of this slab pile,
And we both become part of the grass and
“the earth from where we came.”
  Submitted By: Cathy Robinson