Visiting the Island
 
Arctic terns rose shrieking from the mist
like sudden accusations, as you left.
I watched the seals watch me – tried to resist
the urge to move in closer when they sang –

and heard sheep bleat from feeding grounds of wrack,
which match their scruffy fleeces’ duns and browns,
then walked along the sand-and-bedrock track
around the island’s orange-lichened wall –
triangular and oblong blocks set tight
in patterns learned millennia ago,
now seen in ruins standing shoulder height,
in sandstone furniture at Skara Brae,

and in the slabs a blade of grass apart
on isolated farms I saw inland
when I walked on into the island’s heart
down green lanes scarred by ruts from tractor tyres –
some marked by drystone walls, some by barbed wire.

Helen Evans
 
If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Helen Evans would be pleased to hear them