It was a black-and-white episode,
our stroll along the shore road at
Tobermory. Sodium lamps did the best
they could for us in their limited spectrum
and reach, walked us out to the end of the dock,
made a short-armed gesture to the total dark.
You posed on a cache of traps. Seamlessly,
we integrated with the background.
It had been quiz night in the Mishnish Pub,
the river bordering Zambia on the tip of our tongues,
rugby, as ever, an unknown quantity, like the Latin name
for onion. We couldn’t pick Lily Cole out of a lineup
if she’d robbed us at knifepoint, and now couldn’t see
through to the limits of our sight. A constellation
of pale boats emerged floating on the air, the horizon
had closed its eyes and disappeared. In this,
our own were not deceived, it’s the mind that makes
inferences. When lying in a small room in the dark,
you often survey distances in a kind of daylight,
don’t you. You left me sleeping
and went back out to the seawall, the drifting
boats, each a new month awaiting your captaincy.
In the cell water, eye water, the water thought
floats on, rigging clanking softly in the breeze
and afterbreeze, you were anchored
by unseen lines to the harbour.