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Tuesday, 16 September 2014

Reclamation Yards

Past the broken down tractors
Past the randomly discarded farm implements
Over the heather moor and the peat bog
Past the rebuilt black houses
Past the new self-build houses
With abandoned caravans

The islanders you would think
Are not fond on aesthetic beauty. 
Perhaps this is what a hard life brings
Years of cutting peat or catching fish
Years of toil before this current time
Of holiday housing the leisured classes

Perhaps these years of hardship
Coupled with the regular visits
Of mist and rain combine
To build an island consciousness
Where survival and shelter comes first
A, bloody well, long way first

This is not a place for you seekers
Of the peak
Of the self realisation pyramid


Monday, 15 September 2014

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


Sunday, 14 September 2014

Willie’s Campaign

A warmer wind
Nine seagulls on sentry duty
On top of the ferryboat docking posts

Out in the sound
Past the buoys and the markers
Beyond the Shiants and the planned fish-farms

A warmer water
More suited to dolphins and whales
Soaked in the dreams of human pastimes

Framed for the canvas
Stilled by the paintbrush, or camera
Settled by the slower words, with irregular verse




Eighteen months later Willie emailed me to say the campaign had been successful and that planning permission for the fish farm had been refused


Saturday, 13 September 2014

Framed

Endless shimmer
Wave after wave of nostalgia
Patterns thought never to be repeated

Still to bring their own sense of before
Here & now for all the while
Onto afterwards, ever so slowly

Photographers flip out
Their flip-up cameras
Form into rows and rows

To capture the ferry's berth
We are number two
In the orderly queue

Later we will look back
With a self satisfied smile
On our fellow travellers


Friday, 12 September 2014