SHIPPING
-
Des Dillon (U.K.)
Snug, I lie in night listening to the shipping
forecast bolting the doors of fortress
Britain.
South Utsire rising to Gale force nightmare,
nightwear, sleigh wear, blizzard over
Finisterre.
Rockall me off to sleep deep low Hebrides.
Sleet and snow, nowhere to go except slide
down the voice of the night announcer
and castaway the ropes of wakefulness
one by one so that, by his words my bed
floats
in the hiss and boom of a terrible sea
where refugees hang on for morning,
over a cascading fall to their peril,
praying for light and gulls flying over
Malin in a welcome racket of white.
****