Every year

by Sharon Black

the same white morning lightflash
blanketing the Sound,

the same three skiffs with outboard motors
tugging on their orange buoys,

the same pink granite walls keeping in
the fishing stories, lambing stories,

the peat-cutting, land-draining, rebuilding stories,
stories of subsidy cuts,

depleted fish stocks, land rights,
of sons and brothers lost at sea;

keeping out
Atlantic wind and rain and six long winter months,

the stories of how idyllic
life on these islands must be