From the lady’s tower, Elie

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)]

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