Oilmen

by Ingrid Leonard

There’s a group of them in the Oxy lounge,
their fingers curled round nip glasses,
wrists chunky with gold chains;
they misconstrue the meaning
of the woman’s instructions
as she leads us to the charter plane
in her pleated skirt, her pussybow.             
We’ve made the earth cry
with our ingenuity, lowsed wails
from its sediment, its juiced crustaceans.
It’s the sixties, three uncles emigrate
to Canada. It’s the seventies,
our table is draped with architects’ plans,
there’s a fossil in the handsome fireplace.
It’s 1987, our house is full of salary
and soft carpets, whisky in lead crystal.
I’m pretending sleep on a plane of Scots
and Geordies, trying not to hear dae ye
want tae fuck her and aw sweetheart.
The change in a life when you’ve a bedroom
each, a weekly comic, no one fighting
in the evenings. Thumbs and fingers
rub together across bar tables, boom times
for the isles. I’m derided at a dinner party
by a man in a fine coat for where my Dad works
(he knew hunger, worked door to door).
My boyfriend’s gone offshore –
two weeks on, two off, orange juice
for the lass, perfume from the bond shop.
A paperweight is gifted to every worker,
a teardrop of oil at the centre –
billionth barrel. Derrickmen, divers
and roustabouts are off the clock, minted
and life-thirsty, roaring through the air to Orkney
with smiles on their faces in our time-capsule
aeroplane, sharper in the mind than a gas flare,
the question I don’t think to ask –
what rig do you work on.