The Grace Darling League
must be one of those 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
In your Museum,
the Flotsam & Jetsam
drifts on a becalmed Bamburgh day.
A sharp sunlight cuts through the church window:
‘Out of the Deep have I called unto Thee’;
‘Charity, Faith & Hope’.
These tangled words that make up our lives,
the tattered wrecks, flaked skins.
I stare in awe at a piece of the Oar you used,
constructing a jigsaw of your life:
here is a scrap of your dress,
a throb of your ‘English Heart’;
here, locked up, a lock of your hair,
a handbag containing your thoughts;
and ‘There’s The Girl That I Love Dearly’,
a storm in a teacup,
a National Heroine of Japan
who coughed herself to death
like a seagull choking in oil,
like the bloodshot wreck of a dying Empire:
‘Saving Grace’,
save our souls:
Sister,
Save Our Souls.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
