| home | issues | about | shop | submissions |
Skiba Geo, Birsay, Orkney
You dream of sitting on the low cliff-top
of the island, soaked by sea squalls, dried
in the salt-roughened towel of the wind.
You want to observe the sea-birds dive
and emerge with a beakful of silver;
watch the wave crests cleft by the fin
of the basking shark; see the seals
as they wallow on rocks and leave
their skins behind on a full-moon night.
You long for the trawlerman’s toil; the patience
of those who fish alone; the distant
mystery of the tanker on the horizon.
You yearn for the hopeful landfall of settlers,
with sacks of seed and breeding stock; the invaders’
black sails and berserk bellowed cry;
the ramshackle craft of refugees;
and the everyday of cargo ship and ferry.
You wish to watch the sun rise from and slip into
the sea a hundred billion times; to feel
the island ride on tides of magma; sense
it shear away from the continent of all;
feel the slow inexorability of its clash
with another mass of land; rise up
with the mountain chain in the crumple zone
beneath your feet; be ground by glacier and
the drop-on-drop erosion of water and weather
that washes your metamorphic form to sand.
Mike Farren