Shoreline

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playa butihondo photo at hellocanaryislands

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

In the arc of the bay

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I did try to paint it but have
failed to do justice to the pale
particularity of this
panorama’s hue

sunlit mist disperses – yet the
colours remain only just brown
or blue or green – restful upon
the eye and for the

wondering soul too – arrow head
of wild geese honk in-flight above
me while swallows dart low above
protein-laden

mud-flats and the curlews’ cry and
sitting on millennia-old
rock by and by Wisdom’s care and
love attracts my soul’s

eye – pale hues deepen, colouring
rich and bright and in the silence
save for light breeze and birdsong
cheer – looking on Nature’s

beautiful architecture in
the arc of the bay, Wisdom shows
me love’s hope and meditation’s
delight and so faith

is here

A reset button

We keep eating our way through the arms of the Universe, desperate for something large and quiet to hold us

Mark Nepo
Things That Join The Earth And The Sky
Short Wisdom On A Long Planet, page 4

Here’s ten minutes or so’s worth of invitation (to me and to you) to sit still and quiet for a space – a reset button, if you like – a perspective-shaping quelling of life’s overload circuits. Food for hungry souls. Something to keep coming back to, home to. A bookmark.

Thank you to all who have recently shared, and often share stillness and quietness and love with me. x

Memories of chewing the cud

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Pipe in hand

There was once an old man lived on Martyrs
Bay who, pipe in hand, told of a foot tall
soul whose hair was green, and – many a long
year since – skittering about the Old Nunnery
garden, he had seen

quiet as a mouse and quite inoffensive, she
whispered in human ears: ‘I’m come from a
schlemaig just West of the highest mountain on
Mars by way of light years, aeons, suns and moons
and stars

and I whisper a missive from Mother
who sent me: though legend and myth
may sometimes purport otherwise, nothing
in the Universe is ever wholly ruined – for
every atom retains

potential, giftedness and grace, ever cheered
anew by Wisdom’s breeze across its face: so on this
rock though your roof be blown off and you’ve
neither window pane nor door, allow the little
one from a Martian schlemaig a paean to more –

for you came here to learn that not only is She
our family name, but Wisdom, dear taller siblings,
is eternally ours, and Her Source, the Same.’

And I honour the old man on Martyrs Bay sand, who
content with tobacco and pipe in his hand, speaks
gently even now of a skittering he had seen, and of
whispers shared with a delightful pint-sized sprite
with hair of Iona green

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Figurehead

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September on Iona

There’s metaphor
somewhere in grey cloud
hung low over Mull on
the other side

not entirely
unattractive –
illuminated even but
nonetheless grey

whilst dappled sunlight
in and on the rippled Sound
issues invitation to a
pilgrim soul

to this side –
entirely beautiful from there
shades of green and Michaelmas
blue

yellow daisy at the door
bench I’ve dreamed upon before
I would stay awhile with you
here rather than there

Now

perhaps I’ll pen illuminated haiku

_______

yellow daisy. door
sunlit soul open to Sound
michaelmas blue

_______

dwellings host watchers
swell carries voyagers home
bring me too with you

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The Red Boat

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In the late summer of that year we
lived in a house in a village that looked
across the river and the plain to the
mountains

Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms, 1929

Then when autumn mist is come I yearn
for a cottage set high on the hillside
framed by cerulean blue to the left of
a sculptured fountain

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Aloft

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Stories

Sometimes the stories of
the garden of our lives
are written in ink or
by ribbon or toner and
machine, engineered
instrument or flight-capable
quill

Sometimes the stories of
our flowering and light
are written in soft breath
gossamer touch, sunlit
thread, the sudden
resurrections of graces
we’d thought might be quite
dead

Sometimes the stories of
images arise in our hearts
the aching loves and the
false starts and the hopes
and aspirations turned, as on
a wood-artist’s lathe: formed
resuscitations

And so day by day I return
to the garden to be still –
howsoever the stories are
inscribed, however revealed
my spirit knows that in this place
simple, silent and smiling –
they will

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Who wants to leave?

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Origins

Origins in timelessness
primal turquoise and tender
held by the softening sigh of
The Sound

born hearing the mothering
sustaining, nourishing seascape
of Wisdom’s womb – our first
teacher suckles, sings, balances

makes connections, blankets
secure and hums lullabies
about our shared sky – teaching
the heart to seek answer to our

eternal why. Yes, I will forever
remain bound to this
mothering sustaining
in the soul of Iona

Depth and flow
and height and breadth
and symphony of
silent music

From her I am born
to move outward
to her – and to Wisdom
I will ever return

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What a home base

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Rock of the Aeons

Be still. Be still
until the will to
clatter and clamber
up the hill of life’s
vicissitudes surrenders
with gladness and
placidly to clear-eyed
remembrance of the
level-way – the going
that’s sustained by the
daily choice to stay
within earshot of
singing invitation to
steadying anchor of
contemplation
meditation
resuscitation and
gentle gradation
where movement
inward shepherds
sustains and balances
our explorations
outward –
be still. Be still
until the will
meets the Isle
of the ancient
sanctity. Rock of
the aeons within

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Iona

Long road and passing places

Easy, smiling warmth
in a ferryman’s greeting
camera primed and ready
for lighthouse and Duart Castle
in the Sound

wind enough to dispatch
cobwebs quickly back to Oban
and memories of the road to
Fionnphort’s being narrow
and a long one

there’ll be passing places
and acknowledgements –
some smiling, some impatient
and in all intent for pressing on
and knowing one wondrous truth

that goads a person on
Yes: at the end of this
long road when one has
lost count of passing places
and greetings lies a vision

set in turquoise that points
to the rich fulfilment of
our lives’ diverse seasons –
here’s the Iona that calls
souls home

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Still here

thegate

To lean on this gate
is to meditate
upon millions of
comings and goings

cattle, sheep, squirrel
racing clouds, windswept
hedge and tree, farmer
headed home for tea

field, fells, road, sky and
the buzzard’s sharp cry
set in silence and
presence and absence

of grandfathers and
shepherds and horses
and scythes, caps and coats
old ploughs and voices

across the lichened
centuries and the
agricultural
penuries, still here

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