There was a Young Lady of Bute,
Who played on a silver-gilt flute;
She played several jigs,
To her uncle's white pigs,
That amusing Young Lady of Bute.

To ease the pain of your anti depression
Let me walk you through your first park lesson

Accustom your eyes to autumn’s wonderful display
Leaves of orange, yellow and some even grey

The branches alive with birds dancing around
And the collectors of nuts scurrying about on the ground

The jogger the biker and one man on a ski
The people out walking, the cafe, the hot tea

Winter flower's start to blossom in the sun cold day
A coloured relief from the winter of grey

The bridges, the river, the afternoon tide
The secret garden with their doors open wide

The carvings of seals, beetles and one giant frog
Walkers, walking Lurchers, pugs, and a fast whippet dog

So throw away your anti depressants of glom and pain
Get out doors walking, in the sun, cold, and rain

Let the wind blow through you wash your problems away
A walk in the park will always turn, a grey day

I sailed the fjords between Powell River and
Drury Inlet to beyond the Salish Sea.
The land itself spoke from mountains, water falls, islets
From bird song and bear splashing fishers
From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors.
The place has a scale that needs no advisers
But in our bodies felt, sensed in our story talking.
The Chinese spoke of sensing place by the four dignities
Of Standing of Reposing of Sitting or of Walking.
Indigenous peoples of the passage added of Paddling by degrees
For the Haida and Salish sang their paddles to taboos
To the rhythm of the drum in their clan crested canoes.
Trunks transformed indwelling people who swam like trees.
First Nations marked this land, made drawings above sacred screes
As they walked together, to gather, share and thank the spirit saplings.
So Dao-pilgrims in the blue sacred mountains of Japan rang their ramblings.
Now the loggers’ chainsaws were silent like men who had sinned.
I motored now for of wind not a trace -
I could see stories from the slopes, hear tales in the wind.
Modern hieroglyphs spoke from clear-cuts both convex and concave.
Slopes of burgundy and orange bark shaves
Atop the beige hills, and in the gullies the silver drying snags
and the brilliant pink of fire **** tags
A tapestry of  times in work.
A museum of lives that lurk.
Once the logging camps floated close to the head of inlets.
Now rusting red donkeys and cables no longer creak,
Nor do standing spar trees sway near feller notched trunks,
Nor do grappler yarders shriek as men bag booms and
Dump bundles in bull pens.
The names bespeak the work.
Bull buckers, rigging slingers, cat skinners, boom men and whistle punks.
…………………………………………………………………….
Ashore to *** with my dog I saw a ball of crushed bones in ****
Later we heard the evocative howl of a wolf
And my pooch and I go along with the song
Conjoining  with the animal call
In a natural world fearsome, sacred and shared.
---------------------------------------------------------­---
Old bunk houses have tumbled, crumbling fish canneries no longer reek.
Vietnam Draft dodgers and Canucks that followed the loggers forever borrowed -
Their hoisting winches, engines, cutlery, fuel, grease and generators.
While white shells rattled down the ebbing sea.
Listing float homes still grumble when hauled on hard.
Somber silhouettes of teetering totems no longer whisper in westerlies
Near undulating kelp beds of Mamalilakula.
Petroglyphs talk in pictures veiled by vines.
History is a tapestry
And land is the loom.
Every rock, headland, and blissful fearsome bay
Has a silence that speaks when I hear it.
Has a roar of death from peaking storms when I see it.
Beings and things can be heard and seen that
Enter and pass through me to evaporate like mist
From a rain dropped forest fist
And are composted into soil.
Where mountains heavily wade into the sea
To resemble yes the tremble and dissemble
Of the continental shelf.
Where still waters of deception
Hide the tsunamis surging stealth.
Inside the veins of Mother Earth the magmas flow
Beneath fjords where crystalised glaziers glow.
Here sailed I, my dog and catboat
Of ‘Bill Garden’ build
The H. Daniel Hayes
In mountain water stilled
In a golden glory of my remaining days.
In Cascadia the images sang and thrilled
Mamalilikula, Kwak’wala, Namu, Klemtu
The Inlets Jervis, Toba, Bute, and Loughborough.

I dreamt my tower before my tower
Arose from oak-treed woods,
And standing far above a sparkling sea
Providing welcome space: a home
From where to think, compose,
Be quite alone.

When becalmed by night, the youngest girl
Of three and yet *****, I sat and pondered
Many silent hours, the house quite still,
(No music sounding out, or I to give it sound)
And sitting so did spin a future for myself:
A castle-keep upon a point of wooded land
With sea to either side and hills behind,
No, mountains surely, and across the water
A sprinkle of isles all shapes and hues,
Their aspect changing hour on hour.

It was not arranged that we should meet,
'Twas a love match made by Cupid’s hand.
At Mrs Morran’s weekly dance he came,
The second son, a slim, dark soul,
Rich in silence and sharp looks
He did at once unlock my heart, so seated
At the instrument my hands did briefly
Falter at the keys to see him frown then look
When I began a *Menuet from Playford’s book.
I sang, but now cannot remember what,
My voice seemed strangely not my own,
But distant, far away and lacking tone.

Faining not to dance he later came and spoke
Of Mr Handel whom he’d lately seen and heard
On that great man’s brief sojourn in our city.
Masterly playing, he said, rich in invention
And delight. You know his work? Oh yes I cried,
Of course, of course I play his keyboard Canzonets
Until my sisters scold me and my finger sore
With trills and turns and ornaments apace
Such grace this music . . . and he laughed.

Six months later we were wed,
He, a most Honourable son by birth,
I, his Lady came to be.
Through music our love begat
An heir then daughters three
Before five years had passed.
And then . . .
With swiftness hardly comprehending
He became the heir and Laird
Of 20,000 acres in Bendeloch, Mid Lorn,
His father and his brother dead, their ship
The Coral foundering in Atlantic storms.
And so did Lochnell, newly built,
Become our home, its policies
******* broad Archmucknisk Bay
That favoured to the west the Isle of Mull
and to the north Argyll and Bute.

As children grew and wifely obligations
Changed I became again a dreaming soul
Returned by degrees to that first love,
My music, that had brought to me such joy,
Affection, happiness, delight.
My husband busy with affairs abroad,
I filled the house with Mr Handel’s
Strains and finding I could improvise
Upon his grounds, discovered too
That I had tunes a’plenty, and not only
In my fingers, but in my restless mind.
Whilst other ladies write and paint
I scribe the symbols of my art, and then
In music’s script composed and scored
To paper with a draughtsman’s pen.

Each day I went to seek my muse,
Would find her form in nature’s grace.
My garden walled in granite stone
Held leafy treasures safe from wind and storm.
But ascending thence through oak woods
To peninsulary heights I glimpsed afar
A fine, majestic view towards the Highland
Ranges so rich in Gaelic names (and oft in May
Still topped with ice and snow).
Such sublimity I felt when gazing
On the aspect of these distant hills
That music came unbidden to my waiting hand
And, returning to my study, I would play and write
My manuscripts till late at night.

My husband smiled at such full-fancied thought
Then hid from me a brave intent and plan.
Whilst away one spring we travelled south
To Venice and Milan, he ordered built
A tower to rise above the trees
With winding stair and tiny chamber
At its top where my small clavichord
might rest and furnish me with
With gentle sounds to speak of music
On the very peak of Gardh Ards.

Arriving home in burnished autumn’s wake
He led me to the very top, and there
Above the forest sward, rose up a tower,
A tower from whose fine granulated heights
A Lady who wrote music might imbibe
A richer view, and then in silent meditation
Take from landscape’s glory all and more.
And so inscribed upon a plaque reads
*Erected for Lady Campbell anno 1754.

After the storm
Squirrels danced around the great oak tree
unaware
The sighthound spied from a distance
appraising his chances

instinct took over

Squirrels danced around the great oak tree
with a grin, one eye on the hound

A whippet danced around the great oak tree
aware of the grins
of the squirrels above
wishing he could fly

gentle lips give a sharp kiss
soft skin slides like scales
my dream girl hides deep scars
what can i save her from

a surgeon would distress
seeing the fracture of her soul
bute where else can I run
with my own darkness behind

No grave could contain him.
He will always be young
in the classroom
waving an answer
like a greeting.

Buried alive -
alive he is
by the river
skimming stones down
the path of the sun.

When the tumor on the hillside
burst and the black blood
of coal drowned him,
he ran forever
with his sheepdog leaping
for sticks, tumbling together
in windblown abandon.

I gulp back tears
because of a notion of manliness.
After the October rain
the ****-heap sagged
its greedy coalowner's belly.

He drew a picture of a wren,
his favourite bird for frailty
and determination. His eyes gleamed
as gorse-flowers do now
above the village.

His scream was stopped mid-flight.
Black and blemished
with the hill's sickness
he must have been,
like a child collier
dragged out of one of Bute's mines-
a limp statistic.

There he is, climbing a tree,
mimicking an ape, calling out names
at classmates. Laughs springing
down the *****. My wife hears them
her ears attuned as a ewe's in lambing,
and I try to foster the inscription
away from it's stubborn stone.

Forget me not,
My friend,
And know that I also never could.

You're the first one I met,
My friend,
And still are among the best I've kept.

And you must remember:
That when life feels like a blur,
And everything is getting colder.

When all you feel is fear,
And when you need a shoulder,

I will be here.
Always, and forever.

Send me a text,
Ring my phone.
No matter the hour,
You're never alone.

For I'll be there,
If you ever needed the might.
I'll be anywhere,
Like the shadow in your light.

And at last,
My friend,
Everything good comes to an end.

But dont be mistaken,
My friend,
The end of a chapter means another began.

And you might not be in the picture,
But you will never leave the frame.
Throughout every spring and winter,
I'll never forget the day you came.