archipelago

2021.

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.

© Nat Hall 2021

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.

Namaste from the island.

Vagvísir

Now, to a darker one…

Have you chosen your place of death?

Is it in the shade of blossoms, 

where the 

wind 

blows to carry words

no 

one will 

know? Or 

is it outside a

lighthouse – where 

whiteness stands so 

close to

gold,

where

maalies* glide,

the great wild bairn* 

free and 

shameless?

Now, in

the 

eye of

the compass,

you see the meaning of

your birth –

your talisman 

in between breasts,

the 

tattoo of

staves in circles;

what’s left of

It lives inside you,

deep inside

the womb of the dead, and 

yet you need me

as a

guide – as

no one points to

their last 

breath.
Notes:

(From Shetland dialect)

maalies: fulmar petrels 

bairn: child 
© Nat Hall 2016