The Quieter You Are
ENOUGH!
I felt deaf from the ‘noise’ of information,
constantly butting, buzzing against my mantra of:
“The quieter you are… the more you… hear!”
At present, my lifestyle felt media manipulated:
tv, radio, newspaper, mobile, computer.. ad infinitum!
Besieged by endless emails, monopolizing mobiles,
beset by frenzied yaps from apps!
Enough is enough is….. ENOUGH,
I have to escape from the unrelenting hullabaloo.
Can the human brain endure so much information
and who am I, an individual thinker or group dancer?
However, relief sat just around the corner
as next morning I boarded the flight to Reykjavik.
A three-hour taxi journey with a taciturn islander,
people and communication diminishing by the mile
until finally a twig of a boat out to Ellidaey Island.
Boating and bobbing towards the uninhabited …hideaway,
an isolated jigsaw piece of land
off the southern coast of Iceland,
I appraise a small-boned building clinging to its side
with ‘RIDICULOUS’ scribbled all over it.
Someone had said Iceland was a niceland
where you could float free, peace and tranquillity!
But someone hadn’t warned me about…Mr Loneliness
Who was soon tapping me sharply on the shoulder.
So here I sit, three days into my week’s stay
in the island’s lodge, dubbed the world’s loneliest house,
where the only neighbours are passing ships and puffing puffins.
No internet, no tv, no electricity, no running nor strolling.. water
just remote, alone and contemplating my countenance
while wondering if God is lonely too!
Suddenly, clouds bump and bruise against each other
as they race away before the darkness snarls in.
Soon, night has sent in its stormtroopers
who land and splinter into shadow groups
while wind angrily sprints up to the house
bombing it with blockbuster punches.
Then rain happily joins in, machine-gunning the house
until the building begins to stagger and stumble.
I check my face and it is still in the same place
but I sit timorously trembling, tyrannised and terrified
while my eyes follow the house’s dimly lit path
as it wags its tail to the cliff’s edge
and jumps into the void of darkness.
But this poem is a broken wrist, with a twist,
as suddenly, my bones brittle and inside myself…..I faint!
What possibly could happen now?
But there it is..
the knock at the front door!
Ian Souter
Copyright ©
Ian Souter
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