Leaving

by Hugh McMillan

Through a mosaic of pink
and white rock a ferry is leaving.
It is not a calendar picture
or postcard, or the front

page of the Peoples Friend,
it is real: there is a hard breeze,
gulls are screaming, waves
muscle towards my feet.

At Three AM I was in Ukraine,
at Six talking to my daughter,
at Eleven phoning the doctor,

but in the early evening I am
watching the Lochnevis
under a miraculous blue sky
moving slowly from my past
into the arms of the sea.