Standing beside this seagull
motionless in air and eyeing me,
I lean against the pilot’s cabin
and follow water lines, distant, silent and still
pouring down from mountain lakes.

From these narrow fiords, deep
as mountains, glacier-cut in eons,
I look for the Viking ship to round a bend,
loud and frightening;
or were they not long dead,
and their boats long decayed?
It was only ghosts.
But they were there.
Grieg could see them too.