my hair is in curlers
it feels like a wife life.

your mood lifts as the sun comes out.
i lose you to a change in the weather.

like isobars we pressure and part
then part and pressure.

a dream of a jaded beach marriage
fades and we bury footprints in the sand.

left there on this island
for the next generation of sunseekers

There was nothing humble about the storm last night
Towels like slaughtered goats on the balcony
A sea with the texture of a badly joined metal pipes
All talk of our suffocation
Quietened
Of too much or too little breath
Now we see a bigger in and out if it all.

Is the name of the island the same
As the Greek word for wind?
Today it has taken us over
We hunch like vultures against it
Stiff necked and collar up
Or give in
Like the sea creatures thrown up on a cluttered shore.

In the hills
On a road
Where there are no potholes
Just portels
Where God has power and purchase
We see a bird
Which we call Eleanors falcon
You back up the car so I can get a better look
Though it's not your thing to spot and name
I have a priceless softening to you friend
With your small gestures of kindness
And graceful interventions
My heart steps toward you
Like a monk on a gratitude path.

I watch Greek men
With hunting dogs
Arrive on the island.
We say
What's the prey?
Then later
Over black sweet coffee
We pray for sun.

3 collie dogs
Follow a man who
Rides *******
Up valley side.
Like foot soldiers
Swordlike
They look for orders

We navigate the mist of
Dreaming
We dont know any more
We can only shepherd
New order in hope
While we Hunt for love
With guide dogs now.

It's a place and a moment
It's where I saw an otter
After I had swum in the shallows
Of the Findhorn river
Knees knocking the rocks.

I take you there
Tell you of the moment.
We quieten and wander apart.
You would have swum in deeper waters
You say.
We come together, drinking tea.
You talk of The river
Being sured up and undercut.

On the grass bank
2 puffball mushrooms
White against green.
One each.
With reverence you cut them .
And pull jet black coiled worms
From holes in their flanks.
They are like brains I say.

We walk through a meadow.
You throw your bike to the ground
As if your feet already know where to go.
I struggle with my bike for a while
And then I copy you.
We stand and look at a wire fence
Some grasses
We wonder if they really look like that.
Or is it consensual reality.
So we can feel sured up.
Not undercut.

In your garden, later
You stand like a love
Salute.
Meeting my eyes.
I know what it is to be seen.
I trust you beyond measure.

Soft eyed seals see us
As we swirl with binoculars
On a circular platform
Looking out to sea.
The Moray Firth chops
Hiding the fins of
Basking sharks from view.
The water is full of potential fins
That trick and taunt us.

When we are stopped for a while,
Potential occurs,
A shift that we both feel.
It is undivorced from our conversation
From the rhythm of the sea
From the times the tide
gravels up higher
Closer to us.
A bird dives, a gillimot you say.

We talk of movement
Then we move, slowly.
Birds fly past.
We may have called them
They may have called us.
We have to 'not know'
In this time of naming birds.

A grimy light.
Coal-laden air
A live bird
Brought into darkness.
Unknowng
if the ground will
collapse,
Trusting
Others who's eyes shine
Black and blindly.

To take up some
piece of no value to man.
Ashamed to reach for it
even though it was
Always yours to hold.

On the face of it
When lungs cough up dead
canaries and all we see
Are metal towers.
A glint of dawn
Light catches on the cut
surface of what at you have.
Colours it
Purple, olive and rust
in the morning sun.

And in this shining,
When you
opened your hand and
showed your fellow
miners
and risked
Shaming over and over again.
Someone says
Is beautiful.

The chances
of being born are slim.
Many are lost.
The chances of someone
seeing what
You hold
Are less.
But we
mine for gold
Like troopers.
Until the ground is uncut with trenches.
And we stand on the battlefield
Arm in arm.
Shadows long
In the evening sun.