The geopoetician who animates my heart, hand and pen never ceases to realise moments in time are held in snowflakes or in dew…
I am continuing to network with kindred spirits whilst the spirit of Ms Crusoe wanders along on an island that sings life through seasons.
April rhymes with freedom, this enchanting earth song elevated through the cacophony of birds – curlews, blackbirds, wrens, starlings (the greatest feathery imitators at 60N!) golden plovers… Skylarks and our everlasting chattering sparrows.
April is the return of the mind-blowing light that overrides wir mørkin (darkness) now we are back in BST. I noticed dusk and twilight are flirting later to my great delight. To the poet, it colours my sense of bliss. And I can only pray Father Sky’s clemency increases as we now walk more confidently towards Beltane.
April allows my child within to reconnect with the now and here.
Today again, I experienced stillness capsules that are tattooed in my heart forever. I watched raingjus glide on water, a pied wagtail tiptoeing on the edge of a burn… I listened to whistling swallows and wigeons. Spring in its glory as daffodils bowed to the fresh South Westerlies…
There is no doubt we are swinging towards summer.
And yet, Father Sky seems to lose sight of the moment. As if he was blending winter and spring a little longer…
On the night of the great eclipse on the other side of the Atlantic, I watched a sky blending colours as I had not seen in moons… A real sunset (pictured above) and prayed we might marvel once more at wir Mirrie Dancers (Aurora Borealis) before May steals them till August.
There are still a few days left till I return to the indoors world…
Mind you, when the last bell rings, I will not linger much inside. 😊
However, let’s keep our bubble of now the most important one, as tomorrow does NOT exist!
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.
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.
Note: All photographs credit to the author and already published on Instagram & FB.
Drinking from the sea…
Some swans from my neck of the water world drink from the sea from either side of the island.
A photoshoot from Peerie Voe (Spiggie) and Boddam Voe (Dunrossness) this spring.
Whereas mute swans favour lochs – such as Spiggie, or Strand at Gott to name but a few – to live by and feed from, they appear to have developed a taste for sea water.
Jet streams, storms and other follies from the wind being a myriad of birds to the island…
An annual or so occurrence, Spiggie Loch homes great white egrets. This one arrived in early March, and had to share the NW corner with a grey heron (wir haigrie) for a few weeks.
Such birds are both majestic but they compete for food.
Haigrie vs egret at Spiggie Loch, Mar 2022.
Both species usually do not mix as I have observed them in Camargue… Here, the grey heron feels on home ground, and displayed it a few times to the exotic visitor…
Canadian among greylags…
The joy when patience is rewarded: their backs so similar in any field, when foraging…
And yet what separates the two species becomes obvious when they lift their heads in the open air!
Canada goose, Spiggie, Mar 2022.
A joy to see!
First meeting of 2022 with a N. Wheatear
They, together with skylarks and meadow pipits announce the return of better days, da Voar, spring and longer sunnier days –
A renaissance and hope for life, as they return to their ancestral breeding grounds.
Every spring migration seems more and more precious and precocious, for our summer breeders appear to respond to the urge to fare chicks earlier and earlier every year… Mother Nature has her own ways.
Eye catchers
Magic encounters so far…
And from the sea…
My second sighting of a deep diver – a sperm whale that seemed to be stranded in some bay on the Atlantic side of the island.
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…
This afternoon’s wild walk by my gale-swept Nordic shores prompted a blog post in my mind.
However, as wild waves – rollers, breakers – crashed at my feet, my heart reeled back to last weekend, as disaster struck over an antipodean archipelago.
Wild waves by my shoormal.
News of the cataclysm in the Pacific prompted a piece in response, written in the wake of it last Monday.
Living Planet
400,000 lightning bolts.
That sonic boom heard in Fiji, New Zealand, even Alaska. Hunga-Tonga-Hunga Ha’pai blown into sky; billowing cloud, giant mushroom on satellite, it has been felt around the globe.
Little Earth shook - ocean rippled so far away, Peru, Japan… It has been felt around us all.
So much unknown under water or where folk live like castaways; potential hell, dust, acid rain over it all.
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.
nordicblackbird 