The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Will Greenway

Skyeline

in the packed pub on Simmer Dim,

the longest day of the year.

They were German,

but not fat and pushy like we thought,

but slim, young, attractive.

The locals said we must drink

till dark, listening to the band

play Scottish songs.

We parted as the sun, which never set

but stayed a gash of red

above the hills all night,

began to rise again,

said, see you soon,

and laughed at the unlikeliness.

On Loch Ness I wondered

at the windsurfer skimming

out on the black water,

if he worried something might rise

to suck him down, thup,

like a trout taking a mayfly on "the hatch"

when they only live a day.

We drank the real Budweiser

and fifty-year-old Glenlivet

from a row of bottles on a shelf,

a pound for every decade since

it bubbled from the ground at Josie's Well.

I forget what "accident" brought us

together again on the Firth of Forth,

but remember running into them

the final time

outside a show in London.

We stood on the sidewalk and swore

to write, to visit,

that fate intended us

to be friends forevermore.

We've lost touch, of course,

these thirty years,

which seems like an eternity

of disease, deaths, divorces,

and yet no time at all,

all of us still skimming along

on the only day we'll ever have.