Poem ‘Our Lady of the Sea’

Looking back to a peaceful walk up Heaval Hill on Barra in the Hebrides. At the top of the hill, there is this beautiful statue, a shrine to the Madonna and Child. It occurred to me how many people must have stood up here on the hill searching the horizon for the return of loved ones, on fishing boats and ships. The sea is that grand and terrifying power that both separates and connect us. Our lives are small and transitory fragments that ultimately return beneath the waves and bog, like our ancestors before us.

'Our Lady of the Sea'

Straining up through the dawn,

the shroud of mist

and the rough past

slough from the horizon

as the enamel white sun

casts off Heaval hill.

I am not here to mourn,

or to keen at haunting waves,

I have not come

to leave wildflowers

at the headstone,

marked with my name.

Still I strain at the faint voices

of the dead,

to hear them whispering

from the grave

I now pass over.

But the ghosts are merely restless,

and unconcerned

by passing strangers.

They gently murmur

in their long sleep,

and turn away

disconsolate.