The long wait in the wind: A poem by Jim Crumley
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Your support makes all the difference.It has been a long wait
in the wind, that ill-at-ease
wind of change. Now fear
is laid aside to deal dully with disaster.
But at least we knew
about the wait, the wait
and the warning and the wind.
The otters and the birds
knew only the wind.
Ever since our glad hand beckoned
oil ashore at Sullom Voe
we began to wait for its gatecrash
on some wild and unprepared tract -
a reckoning behind our backs. On an island
you can only face
one shore at a time.
Today the reckoning
is fastened to Quendale Bay
like a peninsula
and the waiting ones were right:
the oil has not come ashore
at Sullam Voe.
The wind has done this.
They said it would,
the waiting ones, for the wind
permits no lethargies of the soul
for the Shetlander, and varies
only in the degrees of its withering assault.
Life here is a courageous compliance, bowing
to the overlordship of winds,
mourning and singing
to their whims. Today we mourn.
One spring-bright tomorrow
on Ronas Hill, the wind
will eddy the land in song:
we will sing too, and briefly
forget - forget today
and the new waiting
which by then will have begun.
Besides, all Shetland's story
is wrought by winds of change.
This ill-at-ease wind
bore gifts - jobs, roads, ferries,
social vigour, brimming coffers,
and stemmed
that cancerous flow - south] south] -
of our children. Why then
should there not be a price?
And at least we knew
about the wait, the wait
the warning and the wind. But oh]
If only we could have warned
the fish and the birds,
the seals and the otters
and our lovely land.
Jim Crumley is a writer specialising in wildlife and wild places. His books include Shetland - Land of the Ocean (Colin Baxter) and Waters of the Wild Swan (Jonathan Cape), both 1992.
(Photograph omitted)
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