Poem (12): The killer whale in North Berwick

 

The killer whale in North Berwick

I remember a killer whale with luxury skin

doing clown tricks

near the pier at North Berwick

 

in 86,

the summer after Maradona,

we were chasing our mother

along the promenade

for cheap fish and chips and we saw

 

an orca in the water of the sea life centre,

the summer of the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games

and the lonely middle distance runners -

we were looping around East Lothian

for the most extravagant ice creams we could find.

 

Remember the ice creams? I asked my sister

last month at her 50th birthday.

The triple marshmallow deluxe oyster shell chocolate covered flake extraordinaire, with sprinkles?

Yes, I remember them, she said.

 

And the gannets on Bass Rock,

Seb Coe and Steve Cram

on the TV? I asked my other sister,

on her 46th birthday, last month.

 

Kind of, if you say so. I do remember the ice creams, she said.

 

And remember the killer whale? I asked my brother,

at his wife’s party last month,

as our creaking bones tried to keep up

with our children playing football.

 

The what? He said. The what? In the sea?

 

No, not in the sea, in a pool near the pier.

A killer whale, with a holiday smile,

doing tricks for the kids on warm and windy summer days,

 

the August after Chernobyl, on

the southern coast of the Firth of Forth,

where we stole golf balls from the rough

and staged cricket matches in corridors

for our mother’s horrified Morningside friends

who’d lent her the seafront flat.

 

There was no killer whale, he said, don’t be silly,

you’re confusing yourself with the kid from Free Willy.

 

There was, there was.

But my sisters agreed with my brother that

there was no killer whale, nor even dolphins.

Maybe seals, definitely gannets, we remember the ice-creams.

 

I asked our mother last month,

as she watched her

children and grandchildren

kicking lumps out of each in slow motion

on a makeshift football pitch,

at the end of the summer of fear and reconvention,

there was a killer whale wasn’t there?

A killer whale in North Berwick,

that transitional summer of 86?

 

Oh yes, she said, of course there was.

He was there for the ice cream, he leapt with contempt,

slid without fear out of the pool and across the pier

saying what happened to your humanity

your prisons cannot contain me

I’m returning to this here North Sea,

believe in me now or I will be

forever gone from your memory.

 

Yes, that’s the one, I said. I thought so.