Eilean
At home she wears the sea. Sometimes
she slips it off and folds it on a chair
and then she is the hardier, warmer
colours of the earth. But mostly she’s
the sheen of tides and currents,
of salt and shells and tumbled glass.
She leads me to the gravel path
and over the hill where a sandy trail
cushions my feet across the machair
with its single croft and seven cows,
past the lochan and down to the pebbled bay.
Silence pours out of her. Much of it
I can’t catch, sand slipping through
my fingers. The rest I recognise as places
I belong. I swim out to them, haul my body up
and stretch myself on every surface I can find.
Nothing to Hear
Torran Woods, Argyll
but your steps conveying your weight
across deep pile, nothing –
when you stop –
but a snapping underfoot
among the mossy pillars
rising high into the rafters, nothing
beyond the damp black seam,
once a stream, beyond
the bright brown cones
like tightly closed pangolins,
the air so still
you would swear the forest was
holding its breath as you sink
to inspect that deep red mushroom,
a flamboyant beret cast across
the backrest of a velvet chair, and finally
your own breath’s rise and fall,
your own perpetual breeze
feigning stillness,
keeping your small house upright.
Sunday, Baile Mòr
Mist rolls down in gusts
from the rocky knoll
behind the whitewashed cottage
across the phone masts
with their crisscross cables
over the lane where a cyclist –
green bike, matching raincoat –
dismounts to open up
a farm gate in her way; it pours
over the hamlet
cooried down for warmth,
across the knobbled field,
iris blades, black-faced sheep,
to the edge of the island,
slow, barely visible
the ghost
of some powerful engine
exhaling deeply as
along the coastal path
a small red tractor lugs
its pile of gleaming kelp.
Lead image by Shane Stagner via Unsplash