On Keel Beach

I bring my demons down to the sea-shore 
and loose them amongst unsettling sea-rolled stones;

here I stand firm against the storm-winds, cherishing 
the buffeting and the surging power of the waves, the delicate

seam-stitching needlework of receding water; wrapped tight
in my great-coat, hands in pockets, I release the memories

and the winds will carry them away: what
are the wild waves saying? I sing, in the mind's recess,

my brother and I, appeasing parents in the old sitting-room,
world gracious and at ease, turf-fire vibrant in the grate, light

warm and dancing on the cut-glass crystal in the cabinet; slow,
sentimental duet – that ever amidst our playing

I hear but its low, lone song. Tattered along the tide-line,
refuse of the ocean: bladderwrack and wing-kelp, shrivelled

star- and jelly-fish, the toxins and pollutants
of our human desecration, and there - amongst the cans

and plastics, the rotting carcass, the sodden feathers
of a gannet. Out across the sea, beyond my ken

but within my prayers, sorrows and slaughters of this
still-young century; Tikrit, Mosul; the heart is wrenched

by the barbarities; Babylon and the rivers,
Tigris, sluggish now with military waste,

and the Euphrates, blue river, its waters
drying up, trickling towards a desolate sea. And I remember

father, mother, in their easy-chairs by the fire,
Granny by the window, humming, her knitting-needles

clacking their steady rhythms: Brother, I hear no singing,
'tis but the rolling wave. Away to my left the great, dark cliffs,

cathedral-proud, the fulmar soaring; where father fished,
spinning from the rocks for mackerel, his taut and urgent

longing, evident. And I see them, too, the children,
wretchedly clothed, in the wind-blown tents for refugees, filled

landscapes of them, snow falling, severe frost holding;
their eyes are dulled and unblinking, watching. My brother

is at peace now in the Queen of Heaven cemetery, the small
many-coloured whirling windmills humming loss. I turn

for home, old man cold and dry-eyed, remembering.
Yes! the song concluded, but there's something greater

that speaks to the heart alone. The voice of the great Creator
dwells in that mighty tone. And the wind turns, and the tide.