A Subtle Tell of Stones
On this island, people are stories,
twisted tight and whisper-bound.
Few remain from all abandonings,
telling of ghosts; exile to far-off lands,
ruins, wind howling through hollow crofts.
Past harvests, some failed.
At the margin of the commanding sea,
a crack of stones descends to drown, slipping
under gun-metal waters where whitecaps streak
in like meteors, explode as spindrift and pebbles chatter.
The moors are cloud-fall metamorphosed; rinsed
by rain in maddening gusts. Mourners
lean in to a life, a hyphen of years carved in stone,
by a broken boat, granite walls and heather.
Yet more stories and skills lost forever.
