STOKER AT AILSA CRAIG
(For G.B)
A soul windswept stares out to sea
The last time, maybe the last time.
Holding fast the eye on the wind isle
Buffeted and free, the brine woven air,
The taste of it, the taste of ships, eternal engines,
The past, freedom, a roaring coming in, a roaring going out.
Once and forever there is leaving and return,
Debris on the tideline, broken, poignant rubbish.
Voices far and near stolen from mouths,
Winged and drifted, gritted with sand,
The ground-down centuries of the dead.
Let the soul free, winged and drifted, wild voiced,
An exultation, a long howl of why, a longing cry.
The wind shall whip it away – all the warm familair,
The flesh, the dream, the reason, the plan.
Burnt up in wonder of the vast sky,
Turned bird, turned cloud, turned salt spray,
Turned, returned, wheeling away on white wings.
Lovelorn, love borne, alone to let go and stretch out,
The illusion of that sure, bound horizon.
Stretch, stretch out, thin the pain, dissolve in view.
So many, so many gone on before,
So many to follow.
It will not be so hard to leave the heart,
Once the hawsers are cast off,
Once the eyes have turned from firm land,
Once the rocking of eternal waves takes over,
We shall find sea legs, a new spirit, a new way
Without footprints, without shadow.
simonhlilly 