Hilary Chandler
I keep his compass on my desk
That it might steer me home.
A gift his widow gave me with
His hand-drawn charts of wrecks.
Hotspots to fish; and a mackerel line
On a bleached wooden frame
With a lead-weight cone to plumb
Memory’s sea-green currents
For shoals that once ran deep and wide
Mere spectres now in the eighth sea.
Andrew McNeillie
23 November 2014