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.

In Marcassie, the grass-fed cows are community owned.
Here, ideas are new or flowering.

When everything locked down, we dug a vegetable bed shaped like a coffin.
Those who saw it asked if your husband was buried underneath the kale and beetroot.

A red-haired woman reads a poem to the cherry tree.

In Marcassie, the Northern lights can sometimes be seen at this time of year.

Pines reach like a scale of 1 to 10
Pyramids of God and science.
I ride a train tracking a coastline of
Secrets and seals.
Where golden ferns whisper paths
Through the land.

Here in your house
The sound of my blood in veins
Bounces off the walls at night
We are so deep in a silent vale.

I am sergeant to your boredom and you to mine
We occupy and inhabit.
Kept like the spices in your cupboard
A little too long past their best.

Your brown feathers are turning white
Waiting for adult wings to carry you off.
The water is clear
As you graze on the river bed
So close you hold us silent.
We listen to your shape
See how you sound
Half fish
Half bird now.
You bend us
Like light refracted
On this ancient modern stream.
Like warp.
We dream into your name
And swan dive with you
In this time.

We are out
For a walk.
We cross an old stoney bridge.
Low lying flat stones
Hold its history.
We look at the water,
Talking of fishing rights and such.
There, resting,
Over a foot long,
A Trout!
Brown as the bridge
That saves it from the current.
Hanging in the water.
Resting in liquid silver,
You lullaby us
Our fast streams mastered for now.

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.

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.

I see you on a wall
By a mill pond.
Little Philemon
An unearthly turquoise
Stills us.
Stops and
Holds us.

The maths of the moment,
A trickster tune,
Beguiles us.
A quadrangled pool
You dive 4 times
We are 4.

We leave.
You too, Fisher king.
Some unwordly
Concept passes between us
A square noted scribble.
A mystery message .

I scan my phone for love
And to see if I can become more
loveable.
While the washing machine spins into a panic.

I miss and yearn
Long and miss.

Then I change things.
Like I always knew I would.

I take control of my death
Life becomes a painting
Full of beautiful mistakes
Held lovingly against the perfection of nature
Like the sea colour of leek leaves against new soil.
Like a crow playing hawk against a blue sky.

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.