Annie

by Dermot Healy

The sea is on nights.
The horizon is an empty factory floor,
If you step outside
You’ll see the day shift.

Pass the night shift
On the second shore,
The lights from the airport
Stream across the bed of the ocean

But someone has missed the bend for home.
They kept going
Till they could go

No longer. Stand at Annie-Come-Ashore
You’ll see the ship grounded
Like a Casino at Ballincar,
Love, with all its lights on.

And in the third house from the left
I’m stuck high and dry
In a fiction that won’t end
And a love affair that ended.

Like the stranded Poles I’m waiting
For the high waters of late September
To make me buoyant again,
To fill each side of me,

Till then I’m here
Unable to carry on.
Mark me on the second beach
Waiting for the pilot

Or on prom at night,
Watching the silent gulls in a gale,
Hundreds, falling in one behind the other,
Just above the water, for hours,

Steadfastly.

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