ghost ships

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.