Ship | Slow Words

In the end,

it was nothing more

than the toy boat of a boy

on the local park’s lake,

where I walked with you.

But I knelt down

to watch it arrive,

its white sail shy

with amber light,

the late sun

bronzing the wave

that lifted it up,

my ship coming in

with its cargo of joy.

Carol Ann Duffy

from Rapture (Picador, London, 2005)

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Pan Macmillan.

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