Meeting the Lingering Dead.

A Confounded Letter of Luskintyre beach on the Western Isle of Harris in Scotland.

 

As the rain begins its patterned prayer all my dead and God ride and run in time along a long western strand. Where tide races myth magic and sky sea merge shot colours not just once but for always.

Magic enfolds its nature and the spell that transfixes me here lies way under and over the visual.

It is much more than you can truthfully see. It is the exposure that happens seldom and only then when the tides and currents are right. Truth is finally caught in curled waves providing the prayer missal and the Madonna colours you play with.

Rocks are internal organ coloured and textured, screaming bright in this flat storm light. The desert and smooth spaces in between are occasionally rippled with eroded musical lines and more rhythmic notes.

White feathers skip their erratic counterpoint to hissing and clockwork time. A transit of an erratic Venus across a grainy and changing sky. The spidered cuneiform marks of sand hopped waders mark this gull shaped missive. Properly punctuated just here and there with droppings of pure gospel.

Ghost grass hair lifts and tumbles across slight red cliffs of undercut where lie the remains of old preserved men and their mutiple stone cutting tools.

Machair hidden sounds croak corncrake and call to each other across wind bent distance.

Wish hush bright slide, form sound mathematics in brief stony stories under your feet. Read them rich and rippled, right and control marked through the soul.

Cries of screeching scorching screaming death through the wilful grey. Turning tossing twisting tumbling in ritual white feathered mating just for the constant joy. Catch the slide and stall into pecks of religious gold light flashing.

Smooth in shining backs humped from coming waves. Wet with blowing steam and expiring alien thoughts. Cut at right angles to the water lines above and so below. Breach in each to new elemental limits. Old blood on the water in shifts down a slide of ancient green stone.

Age the cragged cracked heights above as they fall rightly down into depths that still can be seen long after looking. Stone waterfalls glistening in blue clear patches of occasional sunlight. Standing in stillness some broken shards of these mountains follow ancient circles that remind and still rejoice.

Here you can love, so know this place and linger, meeting all your joyful dead.

Author's Note

One of my favourite places in the world. Photograph is mine. The changes in tense are deliberate.
The Machair is the increasingly rare patch of land between the beach and the peat bogs further inland on some Hebridean islands and the west coast of Scotland. It is home to many rare species of plants, animals and birds.
There is a ruined whaling station just to the north of Luskentyre once run by Lord Leverhulme. There are many prehistoric stone circles at Callenish on Lewis, the next, (joined) island to Harris

Reviews

[TL Boehm]

WOW. There is something that pulls a soul in the place where earth and sea and sky meet. I'm so landlocked I don't experience it - but when I am in that place - it is as though it washes over me exponentially as if thousands of moments jostle for one single flash of understanding. This poem captures that - the transient meeting the permanent - in grains of sand...a feather - the sky and the curve of the earth.

[Ken Simm.]

Thank you Tammy. I think everyone who experiences Luskintyre feels that pull, that transient moment you spek of so eloquently. I thank you so much for the Wow.

[riskrapper]

awesome photo....words blow me away....very nice...

[Donald Meikle]

I am back reliving the beauty of this well painted scene

[r. f. jordan]

"As the rain begins its patterned prayer" is a gripping vortex as far as openings go. this ongoing balance of divinity in diction, and objectivity in observation within the voice of the speaker, is an immediately noticeable talent. the contemplation crystallizes with an ending as impactful as the start.

[EMF]

Multi layered work at its best. Work that creates a visual texture, while telling a complex story and offering up a series of ideas...wonderful. Add into that a multi couloured and texturised language tha leaves the page ( I refuse to say screen on principal) ablaze. Wonderful work

[MOON]

What a memorable description . Written with love for a place from time immemorial.

[*** Hey Jude***]

You never cease to please. When I read your multi-dimensional work it carries such depth of perspective. This will go to the library for another read! As always, well done ~ Jude :-)

[recantichize]

the way you've spun your words makes this an incredibly stimulating tactile and sensory work! beautiful words, beautifully constructed!

[...]

. wow ... what an amazingly vivid piece of writing ... your words carry a sense of being overwhelmed that gets transmitted to the reader instantly ... some places have an effect on the way we experience life ... they speak to us in hues and forms we understand and comprehend at a subconscious level ... you've translated that to words ... and they're absolutely exquisite ...

[Emily B]

to orchestrate words like these . . . I call it genius, the landscape comes alive with your picturesque words and phrases

[emmajoy]

You truly do create masterpieces with your words, always have and will, it's your birth-given ability; you create colours out of letters. Here you carry readers into a place alive with sights, sounds and scents - all around, beneath and above. Read carefully, reviewer, observe and absorb. Now, close your eyes, remember, feel. And one does just that.

'White feathers skip their erratic counterpoint to hissing and clockwork time. A transit of an erratic Venus across a grainy and changing sky. The spidered cuneiform marks of sand hopped waders write this Gull written missive. Properly punctuated just here and there with droppings of pure gospel. ~ Ghost grass hair lifts and tumbles across slight red cliffs of undercut where lie the remains of old preserved men and their mutiple stone cutting tools.'

If this was food, it would my last meal.