If is a small island, a tiny rock burnt by salt buds, a lapping sea of sleaze and lies where one wanders between four walls…
If, an icon of question marks without a Scots pine or a mask time has rusted, corrupted to leave you breathless…
If has been fashioned and ignored, somewhere beyond your horizon; with only birds as companions… Sky too heavy for its burden,
an everlasting ripping tide.
If is a jail etched to forget in a blue corner of a world built to break you, body and soul, where you hope to come out
alive.
NH 2020
A rock, a fortress and a jail that captured imagination.
Poet’s Note:
I once visited the island as a child and the experience left a deep mark in my mind. That sense of isolation and confinement meant to break you resurfaces in a strange 21st century world. It stands for oppression.
Last Tuesday night, I heard the shalders call in flight well after dusk for the first time. Too well known avian voices that notably signal a return to warmer days and crystalline dusks… How many days to the Vernal Equinox? For months on end, my nearby playing field filled with silence. And as Mother Earth lives in cycles, hissing gales are gradually giving way to a more clement earthsong. Tis the time for familiar crooners, such as the curlews and oystercatchers, we, on the island, call shalders.
There is an air of impatience, as blackbirds begin to advertise their will to love on chimney stacks – sparrows quarrel around willows, and even robins play dare-devils out of their hide-away stone walls. And if we are still to get away from treacherous March (with its last spells of icicles) rose bushes have begun to display their first leaves. Already, a few daring migrants have made their way to the Island, such as a stonechat in the Westside yesterday… Wildflowers too begin to bud and display their colour, such as the Lesser Celendine and the Coltsfoot showing a bit early!
On our way to Aith Meadows
The daily trip home at the end of the day can now divert away from the main tarmac artery that links South to North. At last, longer days allows us to meander around much more timeless corners of the shared wild and civilised. A drive along the coast, meadows and still heavily waterclogged fields to catch a glimpse of a skylark still to sing. Life is creeping back around our shores. Already golden plovers’ and curlews’ calls fill the still crisp air. So enchanting.
The first sight of a black guillemot in full regalia always feels a priviledge.
Sunrise over Mousa
This will to get out of darkness, witness a glowing sun after eight above a well loved offshore island is contagious.
March remains our month of rainbows, with its cortege of shine and hail, squallid showers & icicles. And as Imbolc now feels a distant memory, our dear great celestial star begins to dominate our world with less shame. It is wakening this hemisphere of Mother Earth with its flamboyant warmth, only to strenghen as we speak and cross the Vernal Equinox, when night and day cross swords to reach out parity. This dormant world needs to emerge and reveal its beauty! For Mother Earth has only one goal, life.
nordicblackbird 