An Island by Steve Rudd

An island should be hard to get to; hard to reach.
First, you should drive down winding roads,
Arriving at a small seaport, say Sunday evening,
Drive through the hot backstreets of summer,
At teatime, and the shops all shuttered
Paint-peeling boarded, all locals elsewhere…

Down to a nineteen-fifties quayside
With ropes  and bollards, tar and cranes,
Then clank down a ramp onto a gloomy car-deck
Smelling of diesel, deep in the ship;
Cast off, and feel the engine throbbing.

You should arrive, eventually, to the keening welcome of gulls,
In a small harbour, lined with sober stone houses.
An island should be a destination worthy of itself;
Staying, not “hopping”, we have no desire
To move on, and no return booked, or expected -

This beach of peace and stones an end in itself, 
And not a passage elsewhere.
Inland, the mountains bare their flanks
Of scree to the searing of the sun;
The burns and the waterfalls mere trickles of dry stones,
Now, and the hare and the hart
Lie panting in the coarse and brittle bracken.

An island should be defined by its tides,
And be as timeless as they flow
From low to high to low, 
Keeping the moon captive,
Tethered over white deserted beaches,
Where the grey water slides like rustling silk.

An island should be a place of beauty
Whose mountains, seen from afar, become veils
Alluring by virtue of their secrecy;
Dark obscured by light, then counterchanging
Shapes now there, now absent;
A beauty all the more for being rugged
And ground out slowly, over a million years.

I have tried many times, on many visits,
To sum up my thoughts, to capture my relationship
With islands, especially this one;
But, as with all best loves, her essence
Her essential self, under the surface, eludes me

And all I know is  that, like all good lovers,
Arran keeps me coming back for more.

[Parts of this poem are due to be broadcast by Eamon Friel on The Late Show on BBC Radio Ulster on 31st August 2013]