Not a story from a dusty book, but this island I call my “boreal Eden”, or home for short.
Lookaminnie’s Oo (cotton grass)
The island shone throughout summer, teeming with life, light and colours. Without a doubt, I have noticed an increasing sensation of silence across the land. However, our meadows and hillsides still home an array of avian wonders – meadow pipits, wheatears and shalders to name but a few.
Gannets took their time to reappear around familiar bays by late summer. However, in lesser numbers, our oceanic visitors exited our homeworld without a word or goodbye call…
Whilst our automnal migration gathered momentum, swallows stayed with us throughout September. As if they hesitated to go south… I try to imagine their voyage.
Whereas the world dries up in places, we have been blessed with clement skies that have notably favoured broods…
Unusual visitors
My two most amazing “exotic”encounters this summer: a honey buzzard and a Hudsonian Godwit. Two utterly stunning specimens forever tattooed in my heart.
It always feels a privilege to meet with the unexpected. However, every bird seems to count more and more in this day and age. And summer did not fail to discover the next generation of many familiar birds…
And speaking of unusual visitors…
Parts of world sent off extraordinary sails to the “Venice of the North” on the last weekend of July…
They were awesome: da capital’s Waterfront was ennobled with tongues and port lights from beyond our horizon. Some familiar- others, exotic. The muddy bay has always been open to the world.
They came and left like our birds from the sea.
And into da hairst (autumn)
Without a word, da hairst settled in… Timidly at first, as men made their hay for winter, and arctic breeders pit-stopped en route to their southern winter quarters…
Mother Nature, so amazing.
By mid-August, the island thrives behind the glass of the classroom… That’s when my world turns for the word “academic” until that early October.
This afternoon, my joyful heart at Breiwick Café turned silent with the news of the passing away of the father of Geopoetics, Kenneth White, at his home in Brittany.
His vision of our place in the world may have been perceived as radical back in the 1980s, but the Glasgow born poet & original thinker – as the intellectual nomad – has a body of work in which I, among the many Earth-connected creatives, have developed as a poet. Through his writings – either in English or in French – I have defined my own and continue to do so.
I, in the world 🌍 because we have our place as part of it all.
Love and Light
My heart is sad tonight.
Have lit a candle for his soul, as well as for his survivors. I treasure his writings and vision, as well as his life journey, from Scotland to La Sorbonne via many wanderings around France, and eventually Brittany.
And when I look at the sea, headlands and towers of lights from my 60N latitude, I remember the man, and celebrate our homeworld through his spirit.
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.
I am the hawk perched on the fence in between winter and da voar – this Shetland spring held in snowflakes in a month deemed everlasting. I am the hawk, smallest of all, slashing through time and arctic air. My pointed wings now retracted, elevate my heart to thee, sun. In between ice and celandine, gold of petals hidden in white, I am the hawk so statuesque and yet so small, men may not notice me at all… Aloft I feel invisible.
Hoswick
I am the water, not the rock: home to life wild – waders, wild fins or wanderers – today, two swans drank off the mouth of my own burn (that stream that flows from nearby hills) since I do not offer a river. Today I shone in blue and white… A glorious sun against ripples and icicles. Men live nearby in small cottages by my beach.
Greylags
We are the ones fae a population steeped in ice. Land of fire, we have conquered every field; flown through the stars and icicles to find respite by every bay. In such tough times of survival, we leave our footprints in snowflakes. This island bare yet bountiful, we are awaiting the great thaw.
Burn
I am still abducted by ice. My water tastes rich and peaty under this thin layer of ice. Winter filled me to feed the sea so shamelessly… But as the sun feels strong again, I am awaking one more time. Soon, celandine and marigold will strive again. March is a trickster as a month and Mother Earth, so resilient.
Dusk
I am a dame all clad that blue always ending as indigo, where Venus kisses Jupiter. I am the home of the entire Milky Way – and when I trap those solar flares, I dress my self with a sari in hues of green or orange… Men fear da mørkin of my world (darkness of winter or just night) so they will marvel at my magic multicolour. As ice settled on the island, I refract blue of icicles.
Tonight, I will feast with the Moon, the ebbing tide and Orion.
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.
Too long have I awaited this joyous month of April, free from March – this month of miracles & tears – even if gales and remnants of winter are clutching at straw…
The island is slowly emerging from its great seasonal slumber to start and display more vibrant colours as daylight is overriding black.
Too long have I looked at my homeworld from behind glass overlooking an empty loch. Even though I love the view, my eyes belong to the younglings facing me during term time.
Vista fae North Loch Drive.
Watched snow come and go, return since our passage through the Vernal Equinox – morning and dusk in many tones, yet always with the same magic, as our sun rise and glow over Mousa Isle, to colour this Western sky in the kerb just before Quarff.
Only one road fae S to N – also known as da meal road by many islanders whose ancestors in the 19th century, at a time of tattie famine, were (like in the rest of the British Isles, and most notoriously reported from Ireland) rewarded with a meagre meal to build roads… Attempting to survive dire times in the history of the isles. The cheapest labour anyone with gold could find…
Two other side roads in the South Mainland linking da tuns (or human settlements) were added to the great North-South road. Those remain my favourites. Teeming with life, mostly wild, they turn magical in spring.
Da Clumlie Road
This is where freedom begins.
For seasonal cycles on end, the magic remains intact. The return of life, skylarks (wir laverick) arriving with meadow pipits & oystercatchers (wir shalders) depending on the year, though after shelducks (our traditional earliest migrants) . Northern wheatears (wir steinshaakers) also land back in our fields and meadows by April.
The elegance of loons, red-throated divers follow suite.
Tis when our land and sky turn cacophonous on a boannie day i’da voar (a sunny spring day).
Skylark, Meadow Pipit and Northern Wheatear, Apr 2022.
April is when our gardens begin to share flowers and buds against all odds. Haily puckles and thin snowflakes might still rage at this time of year, all seem to resist so far…
I love their resilience.
A return to my old belfry – Sumburgh Head where I worked 20 years ago this month as an ambassador for nature (RSPB Nature Reserve) – proved wonderful with a friend on Monday. We lunched in style overlooking the magnificent panorama. Strangely enough, Martin Heubeck roamed my mind as I was watching empty cliffs. Yes, it was barely early April on a day of hellery (adverse weather). Yet kittiwakes, guillemots and razorbills are coming back every year in fewer numbers.
Tis no secret.
Our great marine birds signal the return of better days from April onwards. By the time you discover the headland around da Simmer Dim (the summer solstice) you are welcomed by bird calls from every directions, as well as constant gannets fly-pasts on their way to more and more distant fishing grounds. They are striving as a species around our coastline.
Yet barely weeks to Beltane and the galloping to the solstice. Tis when the island really turns cacophonous.
Meanwhile, we make do with chilling conditions, and brace ourselves for days battered by gales and hail that keep you alive (!)
Tis a world bathed by a sea and an ocean, geographically so far away from it all, sheltered, somehow from any torpor…
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.
So far away from its power, and yet mighty for just hours, as night reigns as an empress. We are reaching the longest night as Yule prevails.
Yesterday’s walk around da voe, this inlet of water where birds and selkies venture for survival looked so magic at the golden hour.
Tis like a dream.
As long as light warms rocks and kelp uprooted by the latest storm, starlings and shore birds feast like kings.
Tis just magic.
They all fly in. Our homeworld feels so generous in such harsh times.
Within hours, gold turns purple as our star vanishes so fast.
Tis now the time for da haigrie to fish at dusk.
I watched it wade and stand solemn like a statue; a sudden flick of eyes and neck as it scanned all around its world in search of prey…
Then went the catch.
Night creeps too fast. Just around 4, p.m. that is… I had to rekindle head beams to trek back home.
Another day just gone to rust… Wheeled inside life and realm of death, Yule celebrates every lost soul. Time to reconvene with spirits, night, candle light so precious feels life of us all.
Tonight, my heart back in each voe where life is tied to ebbing tides; where selkies find respite out on boulders…
Tomorrow we cross the solstice, as mid-winter settles at last.
I hear the return of the snow, the longest night and the sweet smell of cinnamon inside my home.
Tis that moment when I reconvene with angels; freedom to wander through my world, in my own time and place.
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.
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.✨
nordicblackbird 