Port

Island waters: seas, lochs, streams, waterfalls
The poet’s father’s daughter plays the pipes and all
All to have a calling from the birth date to the wake
Words that stall, fall short of deep within
Rhythms of the oceans & of the seven deadly sins

Sunlight on the ferry
As for the boys in France
Back to making merry
Lead the nearly men a dance

Tall ships and seaborne warriors
Divers for the crab and clam
Hear the anthems of the Highlands
Fire the fear and then be damned

Dream of wide open moorland
Sleep on thoughts of mountain tan
Lay down old preoccupations
As you would in far away Japan

With the author who committed seppuku
After turning the pages on the love that ran

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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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