Grennan takes another corded strand between his fingers,

moves it through a plane, then interlaces it to add dimension,

utility, beauty; then he takes a swig from his bottle,

as if about to blow a tune from a bugle; moves his fingers

delicately again, as if he were signing a run of verses,

or psalms in the deaf-dumb alphabet. ‘He’s got dozens

more, dozens,’ Davey says, his fingers too making

labyrinthine paths. I linger, watching; marvelling at how

this man – who all day plunges greasy bolts, engine parts

and smeared bits into the mineral turps that eat at his

fingers, whose hands have felt the cold brutality of the sea,

and lugged nets of killing across the shallows, can make

the tiny twists and turns and conjugate beauty. He wipes

his mouth on his sleeve, leaving a stain like an impassable

strait, or part of the oily sea off Norway. Then, aware

that I’ve been watching, he tosses me the knot as if it

were a fish, something live that would split open my thumb

with a flick of a spined fin; something that must be

twisted, turned, laid flat before the barb can be pulled

from its gullet … I feel something inside me unravel in the

split-second I have to decide whether or not to catch it.