The Sea for Breakfast
at the slipway, waiting,
the lap and slap of waves on green and grey
count down the moments of tide and time
until the boat comes in
and we go home
with the sea for breakfast
The Big Garden and Croft
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This started as a poem about islanders gathering at the slipway or pier, waiting for the early ferry, and returning home with loved ones for a late breakfast. I had the main scenes, but couldn’t manage to bring them together with a satisfactory flow of words and silences. Stripping out anything I didn’t like left me with odd scraps which, surprisingly, made sense. Just a bit of tweaking and trimming and, there it is. ‘The Sea for Breakfast’ comes from one Lillian Beckwith’s wonderful books about her life in Skye in the mid 20thC – though I chose those words only because they fitted so perfectly with the idea of gathering in something from the sea, whether loved ones or seafood.