Power Cut
To my right
Black stove, red glow
Creel basket piled with logs
This winter night when every light clicked out,
In my hand
Sorley Maclean,
Troubadour of Skye’s sour soil,
Of the Cuillins’ intransigent fling.
Out front
Waitati’s ebb and flow;
Raasay’s ghosts a world away,
Heart hammering in the dark.
Belonging
On this soft-shining radiant day
Grey-silver seas,
Beneath a massive sky;
Light elbowing out the gloom.
A flirting sun caresses distant hills
And teases awkward trees.
Precisely fashioned drops of rain
Are measured one by one
On tarmac road.
I walk - it's second-nature now -
The rim of land and sea;
Left to my hand
The zestful quietude of waves;
A curious seal ups periscope
Then dives again;
Click-clacking starlings sigh,
Acknowledging the crunching surge
Of Aramoana's surf.
Here I belong.
I swim the land
And walk the sea,
I breathe these hills
As they breathe me;
My weightless feet
Touch covenanted soil,
On this soft-shining, radiant winter's day.