Hebrides by Clair Wright

She was only a girl when they left. My grandmother

Pointed on the map, to the faintest dot in the square of blue

And it seemed to me to be made of the sea itself.

So alone,

So far from its orientating neighbour it could be anywhere

Or nowhere.

A speck outside the sheltering embrace of the Hebrides

Flung into the fierce Atlantic,

It is a place I have never seen, never touched,

Yet I felt the bite of the salt and the spray in my lungs.

She told me of the infinite sky and the scoured land

And I felt the spring of heather and of kelp under my feet

And heard the clamour of gannets.

She told me of the squat houses crouched along the shore

Now roofless,

Home to wild-eyed sheep,

Moss reclaiming the stones in a smothering shroud.

She told me how they left their doors unlocked, and a gift -

A handful of oats

For their strange and zealous gods

Who were as much of the wind and waves as of

The Book

Laid open at Exodus,

And I wonder

If their flight led to a promised land

Or if they all, like my grandmother, dreamt

Of their far off home, adrift still,

Where the sky sinks weeping

Into the sea.