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Antony Dunn

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Dolphins

A beach which makes sense of shipping forecasts;
a light-housed spit just shy of Cromarty.
We came here along the edge of Loch Ness,
pretending our search through the Super 8
flicker of January tress was jest.

In the honeymoon hire-car the wipers
and our breath on the glass conspire against
binoculars, and we are forced out,
waterproofs cracking and flapping like sails,
onto the muscular whim of pebbles.

A small hundred dolphins in these waters -and
we are obstinate at the tide’s hem,
the backs of our jeans clinging to shivers,
the fictions of waves making up our monsters
for half an hour, fifty minutes, an hour.

Then you stamp with impatience - such a drive,
such cold - and there one is. Definite, black.
And another. And there, and there, and there.
Five or six, not far out, leaping as if
they were the very joy of something born,

something embarked upon. And all language,
all experience, is reduced to there;
that sparse abundance making an Eden
of this desolate place, making of us
more than wet spectators on a wet beach.

 

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