To the Islands

To the Islands

To the Islands

I will use the sound of wind and the splash
    of the cormorant diving and the music
any boatman will hear in the running threads
    as they sing about leaving for the Islands.

I will use a sinker’s zinc arpeggio as it
    rolls across a wooden jetty and the sound
of crabs in the shifting gravel and the scrape
    of awls across the hulls of yachts.

I will use the wash-board chorus of the sea
    and the boats and the skiffler’s skirl
of tide-steered surf taken out by the wind
    through the cliffs. Look—I don’t know

much about how to reach the Islands, only
    what I’ve heard from the boatman’s song
and from a man who walked the headland
    to find a place in the rocks free of salt

and osprey. But perhaps I can use
    the bladder-wrack and barnacle, the gull
wafting above the mussels and the bird
    diving back to sea. Perhaps I can use

the song sponge divers sing to time each dive
    and then use their gasps as they lift
their bags onto the skiffs. Perhaps
    the seapool whispers of the sun-downers

or the terns above the harbour are what
    the divers sing to as they hold their
breath and swim the silent minutes through
    with prayer. I will use the gull’s height

and the limpet’s splash and the wasps’ nest
    hanging like a paper lamp under the pier
and the little boat sailing out. Even the
    fishermen lugging shoals over the stones,

even the sailors shift-walking the decks,
    even the end-blown note of a shell leveled
towards the horizon. I will use the eagle’s
    flight moored in the eyes of children

and the voices of men, the ones, they say,
    who’ve made it, though perhaps the purlin
creaking on its rafter, the gull squawking
    from the jetty, the wind calling

along the moorings and the notes the divers
    hear in the quiet waters of their breathing
as they seek release through depths
    are all I’ll, know about finding the Islands.

Meanwhile, I’ll use the sound of sunlight
    filling the sponges and a diver’s saturated
breathing in the lungs of an oarsman
    rowing weightless cargo over the reefs.