Out for a seaside picnic we happily share      
the binoculars to scan the mirror loch.            
We study each shape on the swaying tide,
decode its wing-flash and chatter.
Oyster-catchers Granny!

Silver skeins spread on the vast sands,
water falls back on itself, so blue, so clear.
Focus is narrowed to gleaming shallows.
Here crabs sidle away. Raising the glasses
she rakes the green shore across the bay.
 
Granny what’s that? I note high barbed gates, 
chain-link fences slicing the now-hollow hills, 
the tight shoals of iron grey buildings, the dark
vessels hunkering below the surface ready, waiting.
And I cannot speak its name    

Finola Scott is a prize winning poet who writes in Scots and English. Her books are many and include Much Left Unsaid (Red Squirrel Press) and Count the Ways (Dreich)
Poetry submissions to thursdaypoems@gmail.com