Bedazzled am I,
dancing to ancient rhythms
on western windblown shores
where drifts of machair colours
this wearied soul restores.
Categories:
machair, beach, color, dance,
Form: Free verse
No bougainvillea here,
Wind and wave-tossed shores
Know no such blossom.
What blooms next stormy seas
In western outposts far removed,
Unknown to sun-soft living ?
When silken purple drapes
The open sky, and folds of grey
And pastel blue hang mingled,
Dark-mirrored in the land below,
The daily reckoning may be heard,
Another storm from off the ocean,
Or might the sombre grey dissolve,
Transformed with silvered promise
Of brighter lengthening days ?
For when the earth relents,
As now it surely must,
A universal sigh is breathed
Across the waiting dormant land.
As expectation stirs, the great unveiling.
A curtain raised upon a glorious stage,
As now the islands of the west
With wondrous spectacle are blessed.
To my mind, and for what it's worth,
The flowering of the machair
Is the greatest show on earth.
Categories:
machair, nature, spring, western,
Form: Free verse
From deep within encroaching night, there sounds
a solitary corncrake in the gloom.
His rasping never ending call surrounds
and echoes far beneath a cloudy moon.
A very private bird, he still must tell
the world at large of how he seeks a mate
to woo and win and then with her to dwell
in this his covert place inviolate.
Flag irises bloom in June out in the west.
The machair colours the Atlantic shores.
It’s here the corncrakes choose to build their nest,
but she alone her tiny brood ensures,
and sees them grow and ready to take wing,
for her sweet mate has gone philandering
and yet again, before the summer's through,
he’ll call to seek a new love to pursue.
Such is the way with corncrakes.
Categories:
machair, bird,
Form: Rhyme
Again the machair blooms. Again these wild
Atlantic shorelines, battered but unbowed
as the marram grass, survive the wayward
blasts of winter, the silver sands endowed
with dancing colour, greeting the splendour
of the budding year. A close bound repertoire
of nodding harebells, celandines and thrift,
clover, thyme and tiny eyebright, near and far,
a sweeping backdrop to the wave-washed shore.
Sea campion, marigold and silverweed,
majestic iris, buttercup and mayweed,
bashful wild orchids, and a myriad more,
each in their order pays homage to the sun.
Bedazzling the eye, High Summer has begun.
Categories:
machair, celebration, change, flower, seasons,
Form: Blank verse
Where salt air, sand and soil meet;
A breeze of seasons sung a day.
Life grows to pass beneath your feet;
Still under grass we sleep to stay.
Categories:
machair, absence, community, death of
Form: Couplet