Namesake

From Trossachs Pier, a hoisted Saltire 
leads the way, frills flapping on the aftdeck’s 
red and white striped canopy, 
bunting licking the air. The captain waves 
from his smart red wheelhouse, steam dissolves 
in tiny puffs above a rhythmic hum and swash.
       Let’s go back.
The builders and the engineers at Denny’s 
have launched you on the Firth of Clyde. 
Now they’re back at work: 
the ship must be dismantled, each steel plate, 
nut and bolt removed, numbered, 
loaded onto horse-drawn carts. 
Hands are black, faces streaked, 
the shipyard clattering with crates and winches, 
chains and grinders.
Soon you will be dragged eleven miles 
across the Trossachs, reassembled, 
launched with pomp. 
       A little further.
An oil lamp burns long into the night, your quill 
dipping into ink, scratching paper. Smoke curls 
from your pipe. A walking cane is propped against your chair, 
your good knee aches. Creditors need paying. 
Debts mount while the gables and the turrets
on Abbotsford rise higher.
       Further still.
Your brothers strut about in fresh new uniforms. 
Robert no longer bullies you but can’t resist 
flicking your eye with his Navy coat-tail,
and a jibe – stockings only look refined 
on two strong soldier legs. Soon he’ll sail for Martinique, 
succumb to fever, be buried at sea.
       Yet further.
Aunt Jenny reads you ballads 
in the draughty rooms of Sandyknowe, 			
teaches you to read. Painful treatments 
fail to cure your leg. She lifts your anchor			
with her tales of battles and betrayals, 
of Hardyknute’s heroic deeds.

       Now let’s press on
across Katrine. Your sleek prow glides			
like a white plume over Ben Glas, Ben A’an and Primrose Hill. 
On Ellen Isle, there’s your Lady of the Lake
on a beach of pebbles bright as snow, lifting her head
at some imagined sound. Soon the sun will set, the loch 
become a burnished sheet of living gold. 
Look, there are Charlotte and your children
waving from shore. Even frail Hugh Littlejohn is smiling, 
pink-cheeked, as he skims a stone. It’s time to go.  
With each fathom disturbed, the water reinvents itself.