The following Poems have been written about Coigach and Assynt’s beaches and wild shores:
Oyster catcher
Brigid’s bird says in Gaelic
‘Bi glic, bi glic, bi glic!’
which means in English
‘Be wise, be wise, be wise!’
All the birds, he says, if we listen to them in Gaelic,
are giving us good advice.
– Mandy Haggith
Away
Lugging a sordid spill of plastic
we catch the top of the tide to the bridge,
me bailing, Bill rowing,
me pirating, Bill holding the boat,
both of us talking to the seals.
We unload sacks, fish-boxes,
broken buckets, ropes, nets, pipes, bottles,
a mountain of jetsam.
Wherever they think it will go,
the people who throw it,
it comes here, riding the waves,
corralled by currents, ushered in
by prevailing winds, until it finds
a tangle of seaweed to clutch,
somewhere to become entwined,
as if desperate to return to land,
to end its restless, deathless journey.
You did not throw it there.
We cannot take it there.
There is no such place as away.