The Road to Duffus by Stephen Boyce

The Road to Duffus*

And when the fishermen

     were laid out like seals

on the shore where the sullen waters ebbed,

     anchor, starfish, tree of life

the women came forward in their shawls

     and aprons, arms entwined

and on their cheeks the gleam of tears.

              net of diamonds, keel, marriage lines

They scanned the faces on the strand

     and the singular pattern of each man’s gansey

—saturated now, salt-stiffened—

                       hawser, herringbone, ladder

to know for certain

     which was  the body of their drowned husband,

son, grandson, lover.

                                 knot, horseshoe, eye of God

* ‘One day I was asked what the zigzag was called and I just said the road to Duffus because it turns corners this way and that, like the pattern’. Mary Moore gansey knitter, quoted by Dr Annie Shaw in scottishgansey.org.uk

Stephen Boyce is the author of three poetry collections, Desire Lines (Arrowhead 2010), The Sisyphus Dog (Worple 2014) and The Blue Tree (Indigo Dreams 2019) and three pamphlets. He is co-founder of Winchester Poetry Festival and lives in north Dorset. stephenboycepoetry.com