That spell of snow in March hindered the return of colours all around us.
And as Ostara came and went, the promise of spring – wir voar – eventually appeared in spite of cold air still around. Father Sky has its own sense of humour – call it the sword of Damocles… Jekyll & Hyde.
Yet Mother Earth has her own agenda, and urge to burst in many forms. Vegetal or animal, Arcania is waking again. And as April is unfolding, our quintessential harbingers of spring appear under our eyes, filling our hearts with that same joy.
From leaf budding to flower blossom, da voar is surrounding us. Already, my most immediate garden is speaking,
I need to watch when I’m treading when reaching out to the washing line (!) as daisies, dandelions and bluebells (awaiting to flourish) are erupting all around…
At the start of the spring holiday, young Alfie cleared the remnants of last summer’s quadrats of tall grass in an effort to regenerate the meadow. Already, sparrows and blackbirds have begun to make use of cut grass blades left behind for nesting material. Our garden dwellers are establishing territory all around each corner of da tun (groups of human settlements).
Further afield, da voar displays its many threads of magic. Added to the kindness of Father Sky, light shines in every eye and every heart.
As far as the eye can see, the island is welcoming life again. Our avian summer visitors are gradually making way back to their ancestral breeding grounds. Cliff ledges, clefts, skerries or stacks – hillsides, lochs, mires… Heath or peatlands.
They are investing the homeground we share. What more joyous than renaissance?
Every new meeting with a hill sporrow (meadow pipit) laverick (skylarks) sten-shakker (northern wheatear) raingjus (red-throated diver) or a tammie norie (puffin) proves enchanting every time. Our reunion with our natural world.
Those iconic creatures add to those arrived a little earlier in the year: from the multicoloured shelduck to the shalder (oystercatcher) that have been toiling to display love through their courtship. A new cycle of life restated in earnest.
And yet da voar is showing signs and question marks. Whereas swallows and swifts, chiffchaffs, siskins, goldcrests and willow warblers have erupted around the island in precocious ways, entire cliff faces famously occupied by certain species, including gannets and common guillemots or kittiwakes remain deserted in places… Last year’s spell of avian influenza notably decimated gannets & great skuas, da bonxie, so notorious as a thief, and yet so crucial as a muckraker – usually keeping bird colonies healthy by predating on unhealthy, sick or injured birds… The irony. Their function on Earth as keepers of healthy colonies in times of plenty for its own species (the great skua, like its cousin, the Arctic skua) is above all a fisher bird, yet fell prey to a virus created to regulate numbers…
More surprisingly, common guillemots looked a little late back on their stack at my favourite headland on Saturday evening. They usually invest their ancestral breeding grounds before puffins arrive… Only a pair sighted at Smithfield Stack. Unless… Unless, they stayed at sea when I reconvened with their cousins, since guillemot and puffin (together with razorbills) belong to the same family.
Kittiwakes also missing on their abrupt cliff face…
The island’s most southerly tip – Sumburgh Head – so famously renowned for its bountiful wildlife is yet to home a new generation of seabirds, delighting us all.
A point so famous to travellers and sailors, made safer by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father & family builders of lighthouses around Scotland, my favourite headland has this feeling of a world end. It is so precious for life.
I will come back and keep vigil, for every new visit sparks light and excitement in my heart.
It is a magic place to watch the world unfold in its precious and yet at times rawest moments.
Fitful and Quendale Bay from Sumburgh Head, 8 Apr 2023.
If seasons rule my homeworld here on the island, so does each school term. So much water in every burn, da Voar flew as fast as da Simmer… And in between, time capsules caught on microchip in an effort to celebrate moments of “now”.
Freedom regained today, with feet stretching once more towards the horizon.
More writing under way, now that “peerie spider of time” allows once more.
As we have reached Yule and rolling in its tide, time seems to wander around kelp.
2022 felt like lit powder and yet, each precious Time Capsule is treasured outside timetables. This afternoon, I was watching purple sandpipers, turnstones among avian favourites that belong to my seasonal sky – those intrepid survivors were fighting against everything: time, the ocean, freezing weather conditions… I remain in awe of them all.
Winter, the cruellest of season, duels with life and death, determining survival on Earth. We are all visitors on our planet.
As busy as we, humans, can be, our ability to reconnect with our world can only allow us to be at one with it all. I often missed out on treading on my favourite sand bridge this year… I certainly favoured other magic places on the island, yet Ninian Sands allows full cleansing of the mind and soul. Tis time I return to it before this incredibly busy year ends.
So little left of 2021, and yet so much achieved and shared!
I am grateful to your support throughout another challenging year driven by the imperative of a terrifying bug that keeps animating the human world…
Grateful to those who have given the poet’s work an extraordinary platform that has reached far further afield than expected – they know who they are, and let it be some of the those magic stepping stones to greater things.
Grateful to our planet for homing the woman in such extraordinary surroundings, as survival has remained de rigueur.
Grateful to my angels, whether on Earth or in the sky.
As our homeworld rotates with grace towards the dawn of a new year, I, like you, live in hope. Hope we can eventually free ourselves from this new form of biological terrorism; hope we can come to our senses (as a species) and start to look at ourselves as a wiser community coming to terms with our own paradox and allow both ourselves and our future generations to continue striving on Earth in a less demanding manner, and with so much more respect towards Mother Nature.
I am grateful to each sunrise glowing into my eyes – each turn of tide, seasonal return of our migrating avifauna and marine fauna.
I am grateful to be alive and walk the shore – marvel at the abundance and beauty of life. I am a mere visitor as the rest of the animal and vegetal kingdom. And yet, with so much joy I celebrate it all with either a pen or pixels…
Today, I once roamed the southern part of the island, and stopped to watch and wish – wish for a brighter chapter ahead.
Captured time capsules of the wild in my “little black box” and pray the island continues to home this sanctuary of life.
Strangely, some of our mudflats are currently homing species that should winter so far away from us… A sign of deregulation, change from our natural world. An unknown omen.
I can only hope for harmony to continue in the great cycle of life, and I wish for human wisdom to override that current state of selfishness.
I want to believe we can achieve this and more.
We owe it to the balance of life – that of the vegetal and animal kingdom to which we belong.
I am grateful to each and everyone involved in protecting our homeworld. If we too are adding our own stones to this great edifice, and are prepared to accept changes in our lifestyles, our efforts and resilience will pay off.
As I am striving to start assembling a new collection of poetry during Yuletide and ritual of passage to a New Year, let me wish each and everyone the very best for 2022 – good health (first) light & love, daily joys and happiness.
Life is short, precious and unique for each one of us. I, like you, am deeply grateful for it.
This place on Earth and in my heart where I belong, because my senses say it so, has recovered seasonal white, or even bluish icicles now we stand so far from the sun.
And yet shorter days can shine.
This morning, I’m waking up to a hot bowl of porridge whilst the cabin heats up a bit. If my duck down quilt kept human and cat warm whilst the temperature plummeted below what can be read on room thermometers, that polar wind from Arctic Tromsø is still blasting… Tis the realm of Yule encroaching on my Nordic world.
Yule, the festive time as we come to a halt – light candles on window sills or on chimney mantlepieces… Share a table free from the pressure of time, tokens of love and marvel at the starry sky from the back steps of our own home.
My bowl of porridge cooled too fast.
This little light we cling onto as darkness vanishes juist a few hours to let our star hover below 10 degrees of elevation either in a shameless crystalline sky (or sometimes in a halo that fills a light metallic sky) feels so precious. Tis the moment to wander through mires an braes (mossy areas of fields or meadows and hillsides) and reconvene with our own bays bathing in light.
How I love walking to the sea.
It fills my heart with happiness, this inner peace that has no price. Tis this moment when we reconnect with the higher self, the child within eager to reach edge of the most magical world.
Because it really is magical!
The blue of sky and horizon so inviting, the playful selkie (seal) inside kelp – the gentleness of water flirting with pebbles as tide retreats at a slow pace… Our Earth’s rhythm allows it all.
All around us, what looks barren and just dormant under snowflakes will wake again in a few months. Yet, for now, my whole world shines in blue and white. As as snow melts on higher grounds, wir local burn swells and runs down to the sea. Cycle of water, source of life.
Late.
Our first snow came late this autumn, not till the end of November. Mother Earth has her own agenda. Unusually warm, Hairst (autumn) felt a long Indian summer… Only to vanish inside flying gales the island knows at this time of year. We brace ourselves for the season of bleaker times.
First snow feels a welcoming sign winter with its palette of own colours has its own grip on us.
First snow invites us to get out and reconnect with Mother Earth, Nature and life we can take so much for granted… Blessed with the place that holds so many treasures, the call of the wild is strong.
First snow has come and gone, yet each return of icicles draw us so closer to the magic of Yule. My heart rejoices at each furtive appearance from our boreal sun. Today, it is shining in a glacial NE wind, and as the cabin warms slowly, I will make my trek out, refill my heart and let da bairn inside to reconnect with the natural world. It feels my shield against the artificial world – that manmade realm shackled to the material, where gold prevails above sand grains, shells and pebbles.
Harvesting fruits out of projects – to the poet, tis the moment to celebrate words ripe enough to shine and echo through folk’s hearts…
Months turned in weeks, as Mother Earth waltzes in grace amid the void and songs from stars, light from our Sun reminds of life – from the vegetal to birdsong, September shines and celebrates.
Fleurs de saison, like seeds of life from a planet en route to changes of her own… Let’s reel seasons, as the island sings and flowers – where life as free as flocks of birds comes to da loch to drink or bathe.
Tis that moment I celebrate.
Clumlie Loch shared at WordPlay 2021.
Tis the same that has journeyed from hills and burn (stream) down to the sea to settle among other greats and less known voices in two towns, Lerwick and Edinburgh, through the summer.
Clumlie Lochcelebrates wild life – tis where we witness wilderness as important as rainforests or melting ice at either poles… Because it homes essence of life.
Clumlie Loch at the Virtual Exhibition by the the WWF Scotland’s Great Scottish Canvas Initiative, 18-26 Sep ’21 during Climate Fringe.
Today, The Great Scottish Canvas has begun to display it in a virtual exhibition. Such an honour to map Shetland to the greatest of Earth Summits.
It will feature in November among others and other art forms – 45 in total , from 45 Scottish voices, poets, writers, visual artists and sculptors… 45 voices to trigger a beam of hope for life on Earth… Our survival as a species and for our homeworld, natural.
Teeming life at Clumlie Loch, 2021.
Nature, so inspiring, our garden of Eden, we ought to protect at all costs.
Let’s hope and pray, our words and works speak to all world leaders in Glasgow. Like Jackie Kay, Scottish icon as a poet & former Makar – she, the insatiable optimist – I believe in wisdom and future in which children will bloom and grow in a rich world where animals and plant can live.
I feel humbled, honoured and chuffed for Clumlie Loch to feature among Jackie’s and others’ works, blown up on walls to they eyes and hearts of all COP26 participants.
Let’s enjoy Hairst and life on Earth, where our hearts beat.
There are moments when we just need to step back and dream…
Step back and sleep, dream in the arms of the dragon. April the joker, the trickster, that turned the island back to ice.
Our spring buds deprived of sap, light and that warmth, had to yield to the wrath, shenanigans from a planet déboussolée…
It all happened within minutes…
Even Saoirse the Cat had to give in to da bliind moorie -a violent snow storm – that engulfed us in its millions of horizontal icicles.
I’m pretty sure she dreamt of bees and bugs she loves so much to play with… She looks a meerkat on her back limbs. So comical at times.
I was dreaming of summer.
Voar – our springtime – is a season to respect. As Mother Earth turns generous once more, life in all its forms begins again. The island back in a sky filled with birdsong – oystercatchers, curlews, skylarks and snipes to name but a few… We seed to harvest and yet we are aware of its harshness.
In their life-driven waves, our seabirds feel magnetised to our cliffs. Guillemots, razorbills and puffins had to battle a polar flying gale to reconvene in our boreal world.
Life back on land
April still clawed by cold air.
And yet nature is resilient. From daffodils to primroses, from Skylarks to Meadow Pipits or Northern Wheatears, wir voar means life.
On and around the island, magic occurs. Last weekend alone was graced by a pod of orcas on Saturday followed by a showcase of wir tammie nories (that delightful local name for our Atlantic Puffins) at sundown.
Magical.
We really live on an extraordinary planet.
It does not take much to tear down preconceived ideas and marvel at the diversity of life. The trick being to open our eyes and heart, and feel part of it.
Life is everywhere: in the wild, in cities – Mother Nature finds her ways in the most incredible places, from a stone wall to the great depths of our oceans…
We are all guests on our planet, that has a twin, so different.
Now, the following piece of verse is all about our Earth’s sister.
Planet Walk (Venus)
YOU ARE HERE,
between Mercury and my world, one grain of sand on a lone beach, in easy reach to solar winds, rotating eye around stardust; you, Earth’s sister, encased in hell and toxic clouds, sun, volcanoes and hurricanes – you too look blue from the distance through a filter. So far away from Tahiti, you caught the eye of a captain when you appeared as a black disc, so elusive before the sun. Amazing grace, your rotation in slow motion – each sunrise lasts, days outclass years on your surface – the odd one out waltzing clockwise in our West sky. You are beauty without seasons, hottest of all, void of water, rocky-basalt in a cocktail so Molotov… Satellite irresistible, you are goddess among the stars, no one will dare to plant a flag; but still wonder if there is life, love in your clouds.✨
Days, hours from Imbolc, and the island (as well as the rest of the archipelago for that respect) firmly in prey to ice and icicles.
In such sub-arctic conditions, everything feels dormant. Our boreal sun has graced winter’s whiteness in an attempt to warm our hearts and souls. Even foreshore rocks and boulders turn blue… And yet it has brought us joy through the classic winter light. Tis so healing.
A daily walk at around noon when our star reaches its zenith might feel best, and yet the eye favours the Golden Hour, a sheer moment when the wild world looks more industrious in its quest for survival. Tis the critical moment when life could flirt with death so scarce food is scarce, hidden under ice.
Whereas local crofters, our small holding farmers, feed their sheep at the manger, and storms uprooted kelp from the nearby bays, the bounty of summer feels a mirage.
Ice is everywhere.
In every book & crannies of our world where it can sneak, ice has petrified grass, water, heather … For the first time, the birds’ water holes, pots and lochs have reached a point of polar scapes…
….As if giants and gods from Jotunheim descended straight on us!
And yet the island holds fast. We feast from the sun’s kindness; walk through the land in search of signs of more green-ness. With the gradual return of the light, we may feel clawed inside winter, yet Mother Earth has already begun to wake…
Life signs.
Like you, I am looking forward to the rebirth and the promise of spring, da voar, as it is known here locally.
Meantime, I am counting the hours to Imbolc, the very first murmuration of our waking home world, as a prelude to our very own chant du monde.
Twenty years ago, I heard the call from 60N and answered. I believed in the stars that showed the way.
Stars. A good trillion of them can’t be wrong. 27 is an odd number… I was gifted one at Yule, which made me feel like le petit prince… Another bears my name in the constellation of Auriga…
My dear stars ✨
Here is a short piece I wrote at dawn this morning to welcome 2021. Like the rest of my community and humanity, filled with hopes.
The island on 1 Jan 2021 during the Golden hour.
She ran to the edge of the land, where birds gather before each dive.
Her eyes searched for the faintest sight of stars. Winter has clawed her every breath, wrapped in that wind straight from the pole, she felt at one with her own world.
Circular beams from the lighthouse are reassuring in winter. She turned her heart to the ocean where tides collide and kiss at will. The taste of salt left on her lips reminds her of her sense of home. Home, where sea pinks thrive in early June; where each skylark sings in deep blue… Home, where time wanders inside rollers.
Home. The twigs she planted in the ground have grown to trees. She learnt the clicks of each starling, as she replenished hooked feeders on the tip of strongest branches.
Hame. her heart listened for brand new words she harnessed as her midder tongue. Her sense of belonging in her community nestled for the first time when she discovered wicks, holms and her taing of land, heartfelt welcome fae folk., peat fire in their hearth.
On the strange primal night, she looked up to the stars. She looked at them as her angels. The constellations of her heart, Orion and Andromeda, Aquila, Auriga and Taurus…. She finds solace, there in Lyra or just the Plough. She knows clouds don’t stay forever.
On the tip of her loved headland, she listened to wrath from The Roost. Each wave heaves kelpies and njuggles – awakes spirits from the water. Two footsteps back, she loved the safety of the stones an islander used for a wall like a jigsaw to guard against the Roost’s anger.
She remembered her own journey in between skerries at high tides, treacherous straits, hell from hailstorms… Yet she believed in her dear stars to find her archipelago.
This archipelago, her own world. She knows the lighthouse is safety.
Thanking you for your continued support and wishing each and everyone the very best for 2021. Take great care and stay safe, wherever you walk on the planet.
nordicblackbird 