Daedalus on Bridge Street
Uncle George stands in the front-room
of his house beside the Castletown river
with our bag of collected cockles,
prising apart shells, hailing the genus
Cardium’s nutritional value and for-freeness.
He is old-IRA and has quiz trophies -
but beneath the rawness and puffing-up
I am able to tell the trouble
is the son he lost in the whirlpool
under the middle arch of the bridge.
