Gannets

But I have learned to turn and turn again

to North Berwick, the beach, where the Bass Rock,

scallop-shaped and white, stands off from the land.

We were by the sea wall on the shingle

leaning in the open-handed sun

when my mum rushed to sea, fully clothed

in the stacking bars of spume, and she would dive

when each bar snapped and tumbled on itself

and she would fling her hands up when she stood.

Further out, the gannets gathered and wheeled,

nosediving in canon, a cyclic shower

of the Bass Rock’s birds: a flowerbed of splash.

Afterwards we said there must have been

a massacre happening underwater.

James O’Hara-Knight