POEM TITLE
You Are Here
POEM
You Are Here
Blackness Castle, Blackness on Sea
We have come so that my sons can touch history
hewn and placed by human hands
and gain a sense of smallness,
a sense of place, different than the wide landscapes
of their American home. This: narrow village, this: edge
of Scotland, where a castle juts into sea—
we explore the stone ship bastion, stern—
and yet with sun, with wind
catching fog and I ask my sons: how old?
How old? Make them repeat the year.
This castle more than twice
the age of our entire raucous nation.
Aren’t we silly, I want to say,
and ridiculous and frighteningly brutal
and look at the beauty
of it anyway—how stone might measure
ambition, deceit, triumphs—
but because the sky here
almost always looks like rain,
soon enough, we break for respite,
lunch—a cozy table at The Lobster Pot.
A waitress with ruby lips
and Marilyn hair brings me whiskey
doused in coffee and her light, her kindness
matches stone by stone the castle’s stalwart
bravado of brave in this corner of the world
where we rest and take victual—I am here,
she says, without saying
and it’s just what I’ve been trying to say
to my sons since their arrival
on this wide planet: Oh, my loves—
my dearests—look, listen—see?
You are here.