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Note on Leaving

In 1970 or thereabouts we spent the summer in a log cabin on edge of a remote gulf in Finland near Luvia.  This poem is based on a rowing trip I made with my children, Undine, aged six, and Crispin, aged three, to an island in the middle of the inlet.  As I rowed towards the island (symbolic of their future), I faced the shore and the cabin (emblems of my past) which we were leaving for an hour or two.  All is in the suggestiveness of simple phrases: ‘a house disappearing,’ for instance, ‘like a well-bred smile going out one summer.’  The theme is as old as time: good times don’t last for ever.

Alan Marshfield

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