He asks if I yearn for it,
if we have a word for it, like Hiraeth,
how he feels when away from his other
Celtic home, and I brush it off
like a bit of fluff, as if it’s obvious
a queer would hate being kept
in a beautifully busy cottage, tucked away
in a private bay below Milner’s Tower —
it’s a folly, to think I want to be
where he is, to think I could
add anything to this, like my pride
in having scuba-dived the world over,
in the marine biology station here at Port Erin.
How it’s now closed.
Foddeeaght [Manx Gaelic], Hiraeth [Welsh]: Homesickness, nostalgia and longing.