Transmission

Past Benbecula airstrip
My mind trips into the past
Your lasting impressions
Stress the importance
Concordance of memory

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Volbeda

He paints from memory
He walks across the Machair
Out to the still or raging seas, on to the life of living sands
Back in his studio he lets the canvas carry his load

He works from memory
The depths of his unconscious are ravaged
Whilst his present mood
Is reflected in the surface tension of the painting

These will be original works of memory
For as  Jac says
He is a professional artist
He is a painter, not a printmaker

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Young Man

Restless soul
Rips at his cigarette
His thin artist legs
Carried quickly by red plimsolls

As he skips
Across the decking
On to the seaweed strewn rocks
By the loch side


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Reclamation Yards

Past the broken down tractors
Past the randomly discarded farm implements
Over the heather moor and peat bog
Past the rebuilt black houses
Past the new houses with abandoned static caravans

The islanders you would think are not fond of aesthetic beauty

Perhaps this is what a hard life brings; years of cutting peat or catching fish, years of toil before this current time in the work of supporting the leisured classes

Perhaps these years of hardship coupled with the very regular visits of mist and rain combine to build an island consciousness, where survival & shelter come first, a very long way first

This is not then a place for you seekers, of the peak, of the self realisation pyramid

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Rain

There is a song at the waters edge
There are pebbles on vacant sands
There are swirls
Where the water heads towards the sea
There are people, why wouldn't there be

The beauty of this beach idyll
Is then all but beaten out of me
By Kate's insistence
That we carry on walking in the rain
Towards a small dwelling
With four windows and a door

I go along with the daftness for a while
But finally insist on returning to the hotel
Kate takes shelter
She walks to my left side away from the slanting rain
My right side becomes soddened

At the cross roads we turn right
Now we walk directly into the wind, and rain
Kate takes shelter
She walks just short of a rainfalls depth behind me
My front becomes entirely soddened

A calm emerges, clear light ahead
There are songs in my heart
There are stones for my feet to kick
There are puddles for children to skip and splash in
There are people, why wouldn't there be


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