(after Ted Hughes)
Night turns North Sea, flexes obsessive hours
towards an eclipse and its newest moon, glimpsed.
Night rides in wakes, night's waves rear.
We try to bale out morning, tidy
night's jetsam, all sheets fret in wind.
We gather our son into a comforting bath.
Night's prelude thrashes on. That coming storm
which he senses first. Lightning rod tall –
he tries to climb – then the convulsions start.
We try to move him, shuddering, then taut,
raise him over the vessel's lip, enact
some living deposition, but there is no
Pietà, just a desperate, held attempt
to find a safer place than this.
Carpeted, we wait, wait, wait until he calms,
flickering, his focus returns. Night
warned us, night conducted buzzed
currents, pushed us towards dawn's storm.
Scaling our way round this,
we form equations we cannot solve.
Outside the House of God, I write this down.
Beth McDonough is a Dundee-based poet and artist. Her pamphlet 'Lamping for Pickled Fish' is published by 4Word. Her shared poetry collection with Nikki Robson, and a hybrid project on outdoor swimming will be published in 2026. She co-hosts Platform Sessions in Fife.