De Quincey’s Last Pipe

Kevin Mcleod

Took the train from Thurso to Wick,

 through heather, weather

  and sheep, enshrouded by cloud,

   at the end of his tether.

He never got to John O Groats or Hoy,

 as tragedy triumphed over joy;

  with bricks, not tics, in his coat

   he plunged into an epic.

After twenty-one years the play turned foul,

 extras entered the stage unbidden;

  it appeared some of the facts were hidden,

   ending on an unsatisfactory and sour note.

After both inquest and enquiry,

 a selkie, silky and fiery,

  confessed with a watery scowl

   there might have been a crime.

This is not the moorland of the Baskervilles,

 nor Agatha Christie’s Torquay —

It’s a mystery bound by fog to the hills,

 a teleological trail to the sea.

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Julian Isaacs

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