For Robert's Wife

It’s time you boys were home now - Bruce, Robert, Adam, Victor... And Robert, I wanted you home for your birthday, it’s been two weeks for some time, and your little girl needs you, I need you. The North Sea does not however; it’s a cold bleak horror by day and a colder black horror by night, and it’s by night I think of you always, mostly by night, when rest fails me under our blankets; How may I rest whilst you have none? You will have been guided by Peterhead light as you came home to me that night, and yet, you could have been left out there forever; twelve miles out of sight. Alas, the ‘Sapphire,’ she is home with us now, she clutches unscathed to the Port’s thick arm, an empty vessel awaiting a debate to establish her fate. She reminds me, that we have your vessels home too now, for the sea cannot have those, I have need of a grave for you Robert, so I can take our only daughter to you, with each time she looks for her daddy.