Billia Croo
By Alec Finlay
culture is richest where there’s
the greatest ratio
land : coast
— After Barry Cunliffe
•
this patch of the western
ocean’s coruscating garden
recalls my favorite song
(mishearing) the sea’s very hum-
drum ... — but no, there’s not
one ocean, not when such an
infinite mix of blues can
outshine the map’s cerulean
•
the sea is there for a solan
to push his wings against
or plunge in, reinventing
the medium — when the light
comes right through them
the waves let slip wrack
and tangle, pitching round
until they go breaking on
the boulder beach, crashing
under Row Head, hassling
brittlestars and urchins, or splash
near the shelducks dozing
on their green sun shelf —
there’s no need to worry
that any wave is wasted
when there’s all this motion
•
along the bay there’s
the promise of a new world
from each new device connect-
ed to the cable that runs
out under the wild rocks,
into the diamond space
inside those three buoys —
this is where the metal
gets salt-wet: and that’s
the only true test — the problem
is elastic: what kind of roots
will grip fast with moorings
subject to ebb, flood, flux,
in a surge of such force?
•
what’s solid was once liquid
as with rock and sand
which nature divided —
like us — these waves were
tugged and formed, in
slowness, slowness that
we’ve lost, for there’s no
way to relearn the tide’s
happy knack of infinitesimal
growth, except by sloshing
around, or waiting, stranded,
on the heave of the moon
Copyright Credit: “Billia Croo” was first published in ebban an’ flowan, by Alec Finlay and Dr. Laura Watts, with photographs by Alistair Peebles (Morning Star, 2015).
Source: Poetry (March 2016)