The sea is on nights. <br />The horizon is an empty factory floor, <br />If you step outside <br />You'll see the day shift. <br /> <br />Pass the night shift <br />On the second shore, <br />The lights from the airport <br />Stream across the bed of the ocean <br /> <br />But someone has missed the bend for home. <br />They kept going <br />Till they could go <br /> <br />No longer. Stand at Annie-Come-Ashore <br />You'll see the ship grounded <br />Like a Casino at Ballincar, <br />Love, with all its lights on. <br /> <br />And in the third house from the left <br />I'm stuck high and dry <br />In a fiction that won't end <br />And a love affair that ended. <br /> <br />Like the stranded Poles I'm waiting <br />For the high waters of late September <br />To make me buoyant again, <br />To fill each side of me, <br /> <br />Till then I'm here <br />Unable to carry on. <br />Mark me on the second beach <br />Waiting for the pilot <br /> <br />Or on prom at night, <br />Watching the silent gulls in a gale, <br />Hundreds, falling in one behind the other, <br />Just above the water, for hours, <br /> <br />Steadfastly.<br /><br />Dermot Healy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/annie-13/
