View along the Clyde
Gale force winds last night again…
No Ferries, water lying everywhere, wind bashing at the leaves on the trees and hastening the autumn.
Beautiful.
This time, we decided to watch the waves as they crashed on our little piece of shore.
Tonight the moon shines high over the river, lighting the flat water all silver.
And the moon wears a halo.
High wispy cloud is coming in- which means, in all likelihood, some bad weather.
No complaints from me- it has been glorious the last few days…
What a beautiful world we live in.
I kind of knew that something was happening today out on the Clyde.
It was a beautiful day- one of those soft sunny October days when summer kind of forgets her wrinkles and hitches the tweed skirts and goes for a paddle. And the water was full of boats and sails. Naval vessels like great grey sleek speed boats, tugs pushing a bow wave way above their station and countless craft whose size was proportionate to the wallets of their proud owners.
But there was a kind of hummm to the day that was more than the sum of the distant outboard motors.
And then, I glanced up, and there she was- filling my doorway.
Then I remembered.
The QE2- making her last ever visit to the Clyde- where she was built. In a different age.
When the Clyde still made the best and biggest ships that sailed the seas.
And whole generations lived a life in sight and sound of the shipyards.
Late tonight the mighty ship made its way out again- to a mooring somewhere far away as a floating hotel. Fireworks split to cold night air and temporarily obscured the stars.
And with long mournful blasts on her foghorn, she was gone.
Firth of Clyde
Broad estuary
Flowing coal black
Flecked with the streetlight
Lines of amber combed out by the current
Moving
Yet standing still
The Clyde is running clean now
Rich in all manner of living things
Yet somehow
Sterile
The fresh paint
On a mothballed dockyard crane
Is masking memories
Of an age of smoke and steam
Now gone
No more slap of paddles
Or thump of ships moving in the night
No more bulging holds
Of empire plunder
No more sugar, no more spice
A thousand ships have carried off the morning tide
Past Bute and beyond the Cumbraes
Beckoned on by Paddies Milestone
Now drowned by Sirens on some distant shore
Just flotsam
Of this mighty River
Chris Goan
20.12.06
this fragile tent 