Two in a Boat

Two seagulls front a gaping moon

Apollo-big over Erne’s wide horizon;

their soundless drift rounds its pitted rim.

The lough calms to a lapping slick,

shifts and shimmers to first-stars

ringed by trout sucking spent gnats.

Anomalous moon! Such facial proximity

is too close and clear in the pallid blue.

No fish or the wrong fish snatch our lines.

We wait for lost connection, essential depth

beneath the brazen waves. Only a perch’s dorsal

spikes to life the age-old vital surge.

We trawl the bay by Goat Island,

puttering through bow-wakes all afternoon;

slip elusive hours, years

in the half-light half sensing

unseen glimmers, infinite undertows.

One gull goes East, the other turns West.