Oct 2016
XXXIII
swinging at her mooring
the Albatross sits out the squall
rain driving down the loch
its crew ready to launch
the tender to greet dry land
At last ! (said *****)
XXXIV
Reading Ransome
(before sleep takes over)
celebrates this northern clime
Diver or no Diver preoccupied ****
leaves the shore party to find
adventure above the secret cove
where Captain Flint and the scrubbers
make the Sea Bear fit for Old Mac
. . . but I am seduced
(until she comes to bed)
with Ms Jamie’s Sabbath Day
on Collinsay finding nothing
more necessary to write than
Sea, Birds, Wind
XXXX
Yesterday it rained all day
so the museum beckoned
and we became enthralled
by the artefacts of daily life,
images of times within
the memory - just. The things
of living mostly at home and
further from the world we know
and somehow cope with stand
testament to a way of life
now passed now gone.
Between bench and stove,
dresser and wheel,
the chest and personal
things, their short distances
collect in memory.
XXXV
sky blue
clouds grey and white
hills green and brown and purple
rocks grey and black
sea green and turquoise
tide brown
sand khaki
all the colours come together
on this afternoon beach
where the tide rising
dogs the footstep
swinging at her mooring
the Albatross sits out the squall
rain driving down the loch
its crew ready to launch
the tender to greet dry land
At last ! (said *****)
XXXIV
Reading Ransome
(before sleep takes over)
celebrates this northern clime
Diver or no Diver preoccupied ****
leaves the shore party to find
adventure above the secret cove
where Captain Flint and the scrubbers
make the Sea Bear fit for Old Mac
. . . but I am seduced
(until she comes to bed)
with Ms Jamie’s Sabbath Day
on Collinsay finding nothing
more necessary to write than
Sea, Birds, Wind
XXXX
Yesterday it rained all day
so the museum beckoned
and we became enthralled
by the artefacts of daily life,
images of times within
the memory - just. The things
of living mostly at home and
further from the world we know
and somehow cope with stand
testament to a way of life
now passed now gone.
Between bench and stove,
dresser and wheel,
the chest and personal
things, their short distances
collect in memory.
XXXV
sky blue
clouds grey and white
hills green and brown and purple
rocks grey and black
sea green and turquoise
tide brown
sand khaki
all the colours come together
on this afternoon beach
where the tide rising
dogs the footstep
These poems are part of a collection of forty-five written during July and August 2016. Thirty-six of these poems were written in the Outer Hebrides on the islands of North and South Uist, and on Eriskay. They are site-specific, written on-the-fly en plain air. They sit alongside drawings made in a pocket-size notebook; a response to what I’ve seen rather than what I’ve thought about or reflected upon. Some tell miniature stories that stretch things seen a little further - with imagination’s miracle. They take a line of looking for a walk in words.
(Wakefield, UK)
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