We are away on holiday next week, and always, this brings to mind ferry journeys to Hebridean islands…

Calmac. A familiar, sometimes infuriating old friend.

This year we are going to France. We might well regret this. Usually, every other place is measured against the beauty of a soft Hebridean evening, and the peace this always brings to the soul.

So here is a poem that captures some of these thoughts.

Caledonian MacBrayne.

In this world of wide-eyed wonders
I have loved to linger at those places
Off the beaten track
Places where haste seems waste
And tide and time waits for everyone
Courtesy of Calmac.

Over the soft morning air comes the murmur of machines
Somehow disconnected from the passage of ship
Over sea.

Diesel smokes the breeze, but above it all
The crews bacon tempts even the vegetarian
Romance was never
So gloriously utilitarian

And after the commercial break to my reverie forced by ticket collection,
We set out into the loch
And past the blur of portholes poorly painted
Some hidden hand pulls a curtain of colours

Brown changes blue green
Light hits the perfect prisms
Of the dancing waves
Leaping and flashing
Lapping and splashing rainbows in every direction

Out beyond the headland
We meet head on a new movement
Blown in from the wide ocean

And salt seeps into Scottish steel
Water washing streaks of rust to remind us of our journey
From riverbank
To breakers yard

Sea holds us now, above the deep darkness
Beneath the keel.