by Laurence Morris

The croft tumbles down
to the whaling station
of an outer isle, the edge
where a continent ceases,
the ocean is quicksilver,
and where I heard
the waves sing of the past
in their breaking
and of the future
in their recession.

Shades and revelations
could not restrain me
from the autumnal shoreline
when I reached out to feel
the scouring of the cold,
the passage of the wind
and little else I could name,
no emigrant cries
or glacial inundation,
just the power of a moment
and all of life within it.

Photo by Nils Leonhardt on Unsplash