Selkie

"The seal-people dance to music unheard'  George Mackay Brown

Hoot of the owl
howl
of the wolf
bright
eyes in the night -

We are those who inhabit,
shift-shapily,
the almost-edges of your senses -
dwell in the spaces,
the imagined places
between perception and reality
and

shedding supposition
like a skin,
slip
silently
from your grasp
and vanish
where the sky silver-meets
the sea

Me and my Comfort Zone

"Why should I want to leave my comfort zone? It's called that for a reason!"

I'm with the inimitable Sheldon Cooper on this one, but I was called to account recently. Though it was said in jest that I was in need of being dragged from my comfort zone, I was unaccountably rattled -  and wondered why.

I might appear self-confident and sociable (probably irritatingly so), but it's no secret that I prefer to sleep in my own bed. Indeed I admit that after any social occasion I am exhausted and seriously in need of space and silence. Why?

I've given it considerable thought - or what passes for thought - over the next weeks... I mentioned the matter to the dog, who looked suitably inscrutable. I gave it more thought..

In the night came a revelation and it has helped a lot - it came to me that everything I have done in recent times has been a step, or sometimes a stumble out of my comfort zone: the events leading to our move here are well-known and need no repetition - but events they were and each was a leap in the dark. The move here was, as many moves are to a vaguely-known town and a house seen twice.

And everything I have done since has been a step out of my comfort zone; every new venture I have tried -  some successfully, some less -  has been an often terrifying leap into the unknown. After a foray into yet another roomful of strangers who all seem to know one another, it's no wonder, I think that I crave a retreat to the silence of my little stone house and my only familiar relationships..

So please cut me a little slack, as I intend to do for myself - I may be sparky and bright, I may be silent and evasive...give me time

'Rosemary for Remembrance'

One dismal November day in 1997 my Dad collected sprigs of various shrubs from his garden for my Mum's coffin.. 'There's rosemary, that's for remembrance'...

Years later I cut a branch from the same bush, though it had been moved to a dryer side of the garden, the bleak January day my sister and I locked up the house for the last time and took the key to the estate agent.

The rosemary survived a couple of cold days in the car; I cut sprigs and rooted them in pots of water in Cambridge. A few survived my indifferent potting-up skills, that chaotic spring and summer and one survived the move to the west coast...

... and survived drought, westerly salt winds and neglect... I'm proud and not a little amazed, to see growth and flowers on the little shrub this week.

And, in the early hours, I reflect - rosemary is a tenacious little shrub I muse, and will survive the worst that the salt winds can chuck at us. Remembrance will survive the worst life will throw our way - outlast loss and loss of memories and life itself ..

Global Warning

Accolades abound
and rightly so...yet the sound
of time ebbing away

'Divided by a common language'

(to be read aloud at varying speeds)

Oceans apart -
Shout scream sweat swear stare
rave write writhe reach...

out, stay...

out...

Remember remind restore
repair rebuild
re-enact re-enchant
rewild redeem..