Half a dolphin hangs motionless in a shed.
The shed rests in dunes of mohair
where swallows, and swifts take insects to the dark.
The sea is trapped half in, half out
and pours in one endless wave, the sand under.
Dry and urchin skeletons lie in scatters
like tea leaves on a bone china floor.
We strode into this beach searching for hope
and found it as we dove into the water.
(It only takes that second of decision
to dive into the cold water.)
Your hairs on end are slipped up along your skin.
The sky pulsates and islands disappear.
Trillions of tons of rock, gone
like a child put their hand over your eyes.
The lines in the sand align in one direction
– it’s the future – but dressed as the past;
the seas were much higher then,
the domed fort on the rock was whole then
which was after stolen for wall and hearth.
A chirp comes from the dark attic –
A half open door to the dark attic.
*
A puffin, panicked and trying to fly
is suspended in the dark, and a gannet
is limp and hanging on an extinct volcano.
All the minke whales and seal puppets
are pulled down and up by the sound of ferries.
The sky is a mercury fog – the grey havens
shine before us through the cattle pass.
Time and political phenomena hang in the clouds –
A base where marine weapons are dreamt –
three thin towers hover, machines we do not know;
the sky machine and the sea machine –
oh please let us not know – let
them surprise us with unexpected coolness.
Sun on the horizon and the caldera of each wave
Sun on the backs of the common dolphins
Sun on the curve of the moon in the blue sky.
*
We climbed Arthur’s seat for sign of the round table
finding none we saw the cracked shells of castles
like ruined predictions – predictions ruined
in ecstasy by the army of the commons.
We saw light, we were taught blue and grey
that could be stitched with the sun’s needle –
blurred by rain. Ancient beaches crunched
and shells of pale green among orange weeds
popped under our boots as we crossed the sea river.
This language of rock the earth speaks
with its conjugations that make us pale –
make us loose salt from our eyes and our body.
Impossible grammar – how could this be here?
On the thyme of the rock, the insect wing dance –
and the ringed plover dance to signal us
warning. Ea’s force thunders over the cliff,
we think of lying there naked on the mud.
You, there with me, are diamond in hammered silver
in your baggy t-shirt. You point at the sun
as it sounds the hills at evening –
with a red glow that circumscribes ecology
Standing in the cold clear water
Standing on the mountain pass, looking at facilities –
feeding horses with handfuls of species.
Dropping the urchin’s bones they break on the red
sand oxidised over billions of years.
Among the mohair we sit and drink beer.
Standing on the beach, in three lights –
how can we be a problem to things?
And yet. The dolphin hangs motionless in the dark
disappearing
*
At Clachan Manse the viking wood and metal crack.
the boat (alighting on the sand) screams and screams carry on the wind
through the campsite to the Broch sheltered commoners
Time enfolds all things in permeable envelopes
Time envelops the parcel with the cross carved in red
borne by the sea from the princess of Denmark
and the tattered sailboat cresting the bay
full of those seeking refuge from the sun’s expanding desert
Each clutching a small crystal, a useless crystal
And watching the horizon for common dolphins
Passages of ocean to air, marked by foam
Coagulations of time, crunching over the sharks in the deep
*
The shore is open to the sky and time –
We cross the bay, picking over mussels.
At the mountain coffee company in Gairloch
I see the blue mountains and the sun-cut sea.
Oh for a society that saw the face of itself
I creep once more into abstraction –
Our cities will die. Base, base instinct to say
we will forever have loved. And yet, and yet…
Absolute|Unrest 