Saturday Evening, Aberdeen Beach

Lighthouse winks on the headland,
Promising a haven for weary vessels.
A boat with a beacon sails the tide,
Out for herring, in the salt and smack of spray.

From long ago men fished in local waters,
At war and peace with nature
Depending on the weather and the omens:
And the sacrifices of a summer solstice.

Oilrig looms on the horizon,
Piping to the heartbeat of the seabed.
Lonely, to live on a storm-tossed
Artificial island, an industrial maze of girders.

The coming of the Norsemen was foretold
From a lone visionary hut on the hill
By a hermit, his hair rough and ragged:
Rocks and pools black with the foretelling.

I shelter by the barnacled wooden barriers
From the chilly spits of drizzling rain.
The beach covered in a constellation of pebbles,
Surrounded by seaweed nebulae.

Olaf the Terrible and his vulpine crew landed
Amongst other long-ships, with their smell of death.
Cliff battles raged, black funeral palls of smoke
Rising as the new tenants occupied the smallholdings.

Briny sea pounds ceaselessly on shoreland,
Lifebelt keeps a lookout for those in distress.
The wet slipsand darkens beneath my feet
As I retreat from the oncoming tide.