THE BLUE-WHITE GULLS

Among the Blue

Somehow I wish could say
it was indifference not love
that found the coordinates
for cormorants among the blue
the blue-white gulls

tell you that we have lived once
and will not come this way again

say to you that as long as art
teaches language of recovery
eternal reminders of morning
will grow on our sweat, spume,
tick softly on our lips, on our lips.

Gerry McGrath was born in Helensburgh, near Glasgow, in 1962 and studied at Strathclyde University before becominga teacher. He now lives in North Ayrshire with his wife, Kate, and young son, Liam. He worked as a teacher of modern languages for seven years until 2000. He received a Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award in2004. His poems have appeared in Edinburgh Review, Being Alive, in Painted, Spoken and in PN Review, and a selection were published in Carcanet's New Poetries IV: An Anthology (2007).