For Michael Viney
You want your ashes to swirl along the strand
At Thallabawn - amongst clockwork, approachable,
Circumambulatory sanderlings, crab shells,
Bladderwrack, phosphorescence at spring tide -
Around the burial mound's wind-and-wave-inspired
Vanishing act - through dowel-holes in the wreck -
Into bottles but without a message, only
Self-effacement in sand, additional eddies.
There's no such place as heaven, so let it be
The Carricknashinnagh shoal or Cahir
Island where you honeymooned in a tent
Amid the pilgrim-fishermen's stations,
Your spillet disentangling and trailing off
Into the night, a ghost on every hook - dab
And flounder, thorny skate - at ebb tide you
Kneeling on watery sand to haul them in.
Let us choose for the wreath a flower so small
Even you haven't spotted on the dune-slack
Between Claggan and Lackakeely its rosette -
Petalwort: snail snack, angel's nosegay.