What became of the little bay
Where winkles and feathered sea slugs
Lived among the blue-rayed limpets?
No more a place of butterfish and velvet crabs
But an artless concrete platform
Decked out in fading railway depot drab.
Standing in the stinging wind
My gaze moves out
To Lochavaulin playing fields,
Devoid of shinty-playing children
But scarred instead with small and failing businesses
Housed in concrete bunkers,
Gardened about with the litter of shoe-string industry
And the mobile dwellings of New Age travellers
Or Old World tinkers.
Out towards Lonan and Glenmore
The ghastly grey tenements
Thrown up for the city influx
Of paper pushers and the dispossessed.
Where has it gone,
The scene of my youth:
My youth?
Wait! Was that Catriona?
I’ll swear it was:
Boyish figure, hair wild in the wind,
Jeans and a baggy Arran,
Running for the bus.
She’s not changed.
Just as I remember her.
But no…….. . I am mistaken.