Leaving

Loch Ryan is Pink

Loch Ryan is pink.

Stranraer is curling up in a corner

with its people shrinking inside it.

I'm watching the hills' colour draining away

so they become just shadows of a land.

Only the gulls are real and even they

look more like discarded wrappers.

I am looking back over the stern

with the wind pouring down the port-side,

a wisp of the emigrant's sadness blows over me.

This receding shore to another Irishman

might have been Lough Foyle or Cobh or Sligo

and the light at Malin or Tory might

have been the last twinkle before the ship

buried itself in the Atlantic darkness.

The last beads of land would have been treasure

to be stored but instead they are like water.

As the day funnels even further to the west

Scotland makes itself small; somehow it  seems

to be leaving us; turning away. The ship's trace

is a luminous wake and a highway of smoke;

you, who have left no trace, are already forgotten.

I imagine them homeless on board a Christmas tree

bobbing on an ocean between two continents.