STILL WATERS

Though there is haze today, from the headland

I can see the outline of the southern hills

of the Isle of Man. The sea is still, barely

a ripple between here and the Manx coast,

or west towards Dublin, eastwards Liverpool.

Across the sky there are wispy clouds,

and con-trails drifting slowly off course.

This is a Viking sea, a sea of

emigrants, of refugees, the dispossessed.

So many miles of becalmed aquamarine

belying that other, twilit world

that teems beneath, and we left long ago:

leviathans and shrimps and jellyfish,

impervious to whatever weathers

might be forecast here – moderate; veering;

severe; phenomenal.