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Scatness & Horse Island, Shetland, Scotland
The Moder-dy
Bearing our lives in the old way by sun
and stars in the night
and the ‘mother-wave’
surging homeward
whatever the wind.
On the seventh wave of a run
comes this older
drift to the land.
Swing the ship to its line,
(they said) and you live.
I’ve heard of fisherman winning home
that way; but running before a storm
you’d need ear eyes
to sound a home wave,
see a mother in water.
An old art is lost now.
Decca provides
a signal as safe, as sure
as machine. They will win
to their women, and touch
as on screens, and tell them:
‘I don’t know
how the old folk ever managed.‘
In the open haaf only,
the great sea journey,
the waves at their height,
one in seven
I kept watching -
one in seven
may be the Moder-dy.
(Robin Munro)
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