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and it strikes me that
this city has come alive
like this through aeons
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Morning
Category: gratefulness
Edinburgh haar
Edinburgh’s sea haar
rolls oe’r the land in silence
softly touching all
Edinburgh’s sea mist, which arrives rolling as surprise, with stealth, and in silence, is restful to tired eyes. It carries a soft damp chill, like breath in a snowy landscape, or a kneeling to retrieve fruit from a freezer. It’s Edinburgh character. It’s gift. It’s a picture. It’s reminder of the rolling panoply of nature-imbued life. And watching the landscape going and coming, and coming and going, softened, and thereby refreshed, it’s as though one were summoned by love.
Happy are they for whom
haar-softened edges come to
show the world anew
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Sunlight
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I’ve enjoyed a lovely afternoon with one of my Lakeland neighbours today – a good catch-up generally, and a sharing of our love for gardens and sunlight illuminating flower and leaf particularly. Buds still tight on my beloved acer tree have, in the last 24 hours, opened into fresh and beautiful leaf, and as for the blossoms and flowers in my friend’s garden … they’re spellbinding! The first and the last photos here were made in my garden. The others, in his.
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Petrichor
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I can’t remember quite when, but it was only a little while ago that a bit of research led me to the discovery that the word ‘petrichor’ speaks of the wonderful scent that delights us after heavy rain meets soil after a long period of dry weather.
My bare hands have been working in the soil of raised beds until past dusk this evening and – in the liminal spaces that are a happy feature of light gardening – I’ve been aware of three things:
Of petrichor. The soil, loosened, raked and weeded, albeit in the absence of heavy rain, released a quite lovely scent – a touch of coal tar, perhaps a drop of creosote? – something, anyway, that smelled different, healthy, and unusual. I was glad of it.
Of a robin. How is it that robins appear to be talking to us when we set about even minimal works in a garden? This one’s little head cocked from side to side, his tail rocking up and down. He looked thoroughly interested and I don’t quite know how that can be so – how his little face is so expressive. I am glad of it, too.
Of bacteria. Especially of that particular bacteria that soil apparently nurtures – which, I learned last week, when coming into contact with bare human hands, releases dopamine in them. Here, in part, is what makes us happy when we’re pottering about in gardens – along with a wide sky, the scent of the lawn, apple blossoms, green shoots, the gradual stilling of post-dusk birdsong, and yes, the scent of the glad, the perfume – on such an evening – of the gratefully content.
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Everything listens
not to produce some
thing but just to acknowledge
the good in paintingthe brush moves without
urgency and colours touch
listening paperand my listening
and that of paper and brush
colour memoryand in the quiet
something of silence settles
deeper than colour
Before colour becomes form, before brush becomes movement, there is a moment of stillness where everything listens. And in that stillness, and in that listening, in mere wisp of movement, in the slightest glance into light – a gently persistent voice invites me to attend to ‘something … deeper than colour’
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Spring cleaning 🎨
sunshine and fresh air
are great motivators for
spring cleaning and art
By late Sunday afternoon I felt the contented tiredness of used window-cleaning muscles, the companionship of a colourful and imaginary friend working in the garden with me, coffee and crayons, and the mental satisfaction of some seasonal jobs now accomplished.
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Shoreline
Down the dusty slope to the long sweep of
gold sand and the beach café’s garlic gambas
and Pablo’s distinctively rich dark brown
coffee where the chief scent of the morning
is of suncream and warmed skin and quiet
conversation is accompanied by
out-of-control symphonies of wind-blown
wires thrashing the masts of a rainbow of
sailboards – and yes – we come here every year
to tell again of the turquoise and the
turtles and shyly aware faithfulness
to-a-fault to these times and to these hot
prawns and coffee like this and even to
the same sun oil and quieting stilling
soothing murmur of the ocean of love
and abiding in hearts and souls that know
one another so well that the shoreline
paddling and the holding hands and the light
and the deep and the sad and the funny
conversation and affectionate and
glad recollection will carry us both –
after our falling into the deepest
of deep sleeps – unto shoreline and sunshine
of our universal eternity
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