Yesterday
haar cloaked our sight,
bound us in Fife,
lorn booming calls of lighthouse horns
sounding through mist
like calls of ancient seabeasts
seeking lost mates.
Evening wind puffed it back to sea,
lost it towards Scandinavia.
Today
is all breeze-scoured
through crystal air:
sky cobalt and high,
a dome of blue field
grazed by clouds of white down,
the firth before us indigo,
danced by sparklets of light.
A long-ranging gannet
from the sunbright
Bass Rock,
flapping white paper
in sunlight
before blue Lothian hills,
is sudden
origami spear-head
s
t
o
n
e
–
d
r
o
p
p
i
n
g
Icarus,
stabs white pebble-thunk
wound of cream froth
in firth’s dark skin,
vanishes,
resurrects itself
as Aphrodite newborn,
the threshing silver in dagger bill
a glinting spangle of the sea itself,
or star fallen,
and found.
[Published in Ironstone 2 (2007)]