Abundance
The captain of the boat, a handy man
without a crew, clearly knows any of the dangers
while departing Castle Harbour, soon he’s taking
a zig-zag route along the jagged splendour
of the Atlantic coast, careful of the rock stacks
and buckled, rearing islands, till he sights
to starboard, the smooth emergence
in the moiling sea of a minke whale, and shouts.
For his dozen passengers, a brief appearance, thrilling,
Before it dives and continues feeding,
As the boat resumes its jaunty route.
Till another appears as if to let the windswept
watchers know how tantalisingly little – a shiny back –
of its vast journey they will get to see;
the captain always on the lookout, a cigarette
to aid his concentration . Easier to see,
recumbent on the rocky islands, is the colony
of piebald seals who share the luxury
of being released, albeit briefly,
from essential labour. They watch the watchers.
Shudder off the rocks, dive, and surface,
big-eyed, attentive to something odd.
The boat now so close the watchers can admire their whiskers.
What the seals see underwater, mackerel and herring,
is clear for them as for people watching a captive shoal
through the wiped side of a massive tank. Today, the sea.
Gannet, from somewhere near the sun,
jack-knife into the water with a shocking impact
that must muzzle the fish into breaking
rank in all directions, like silvery splinters,
and the taciturn captain says
the birds snatch them on their fast ascent
back to the surface. It emerges slowly,
he once did have a crew and lived from fishing.
That’s what the other seabirds, guillemots,
petrels, shearwaters are doing now, full time,
large flocks drawn, as the boat is, to abundance
and, the well-thumbed bird books show,
the need to identify what can be seen:
house martins, here long before there were houses,
still breeding in the cliffs – and the watchful puffins.
Loss of this, as of any fruitful love, would be terrible absence.
There will be returns aplenty. The captain, alert eyes
on the sea, knife bright, has lost nothing of his appetite.
Andrew Sant
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