Setting Out Poem by Robin Fulton

The gravestones still weigh the same.
No-one has altered the dates.

No-one asks why I've come back
again. To see not graves but

that wedge in the river-bank
where the green boat leaned. My years

at home had boulders on them.
The keel never touched water.

My years tugged at weight
no longer there. The ribs now

gave their atoms slowly back.
The boat is no longer boat.

Its ghosts set out at high tide.
Its wake is a coiling script

whose fluency the words trapped
on granite could well envy.