ferry building

The first time I saw the ferry building
we'd been travelling eleven hours
to see the island where we thought we might live
together for the first time.
Eleven hours of sitting behind glass
in the sounds of mobile phone conversations'
accents changing the higher North the trains went
newspapers, packets and wrappers rustling then left, empty of eyes,
crisps and biscuits,
the brown sticky cogs of your slopped cups of tea
like the emerging diagram of a timepiece,
our coats and rucksacks becoming all we owned

Then, as butterflies escaped from pins
in the display case of the final train
on wings of hope our spirits rose

The ferry's station has just one track
for here and back. Victorian, restored
it's won awards. The roof is veined
huge glass leaves on moulded, painted
iron pillar stalks, and the air it holds
full of salty light and long stilled calls
from those coming and going of days
long pressed between the pages of history books
whose brown tweed shouldered, bustle skirted
shadows seem to thicken at the edges of sight

We bought our ferry tickets then walked
down the pale planked slope
beneath the roof's curved wooden beams
with more metal veined glass between
reminding me of the skeleton hull
of a Viking long boat looped over and over
like the sample of a drumbeat
or a cardiograph of the waves
on each side flicking freckles of brighter light
into the luminous echoey space

then out into the glass free sun
and fresh seagull wheeling sky,
their strong wings flickering
white as storm tempered spray
cries breaking rock-rough
through the bay's shining peace

Now some of our history is pressed
in the shadow pages between sunbeam spines
as often we have walked with others
from the island like rippling muscles
up the snake's vertebrae of the ferry building
wave light irridescent as scales
on its age spanning wood
or the patina on a question mark asking
"Where do you go, where are you from?"