ABSTRACT
This chapter presents 'Leaving the Island' as part of a sequence of poems set on Station Island in Lough Derg in County Donegal. A Pilgrimage to the island, supposedly initiated by Saint Patrick, has been part of the penitential subculture of Irish Catholicism for generations. The pilgrims in the boat were singing when the throttle opened and spray came gusting and each lazing notewarped as it lifted off in gusts of wind. Close packed, loaded deep, they sang their way across the choppy water, like a band of starving monks out on the western sea. Lough Derg flowed up, flowed under, back, away astern and Station Island was a mirage now already as they readied for the land nearing and widening up beyond the bow. The way to cement community is the dolphin's way: swim but on their own and fill the element with signatures on their own frequency, echo-soundings, searches, allurements, elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.
