Harbourage

You started listening to music again when
You moved to the flat by the harbour,
And stocked your fridge with irn-bru.

I don’t remember you drinking
Irn-bru when you lived with us.
We did, and you said our teeth would
Fall out. Maybe you didn’t know
What else to buy.

You told me you would sit and watch
The boats navigate the port, laden
With forests of wood. You described them
As giant sea-monsters, the suck of water
As they slurped the harbour wall,
And it was funny to think of you living there
On the edge of all that movement, watching
The arriving, the unloading, the noise, and
The leaving. So different from
Our street with its hedges, its drawn blinds,
And its dead end. The families who had lived there for
Generations. The paint on our storm door peeling.

I sat in our living room, looked at the space
Where the glass cabinet had been, with its
Champagne flutes for special occasions
And thought of you watching the boats
In your sparse new harbour flat,
With its wooden floorboards
And fancy light fittings, drinking
Irn-bru and listening
To old records which had lain
Silent
For twenty years.