as the last of the evening light crinkles
across the lough and the stars squint
at their double: the constellation of headlights
circling below, tractor beams like comets
over purled rows of cabbages, dark and fat
in their fenced off fields, the water pulls in
to the roadside, filling in potholes
with driftwood and dulse, plumping up
the sloughy bed of the wetland, so that
when the flare of an ambulance light comes
tearing through the ink-dark tide, they’ll arrive
only to witness the end of the birth of a star,
splintering out bright across the lough,
where ghost ships ride the water
out past Strangford and into the open sea.