Month: May 2022

Hot sun on the saltmarsh. Crusted, cracked, peeling cakes of mud. Scurvy grass and sea thrift. Gun metal grey clay smears the runnels and funnels and channels making islands and lagoons. Birdsfoot imprints skitter this shore line, darting dragonflies. Lines of wooden stumps fetch out into the belly of the river, cockling and netting. A breach in the sea wall, the incoming sea seeps like spilt tea across a kitchen floor. A thrum of insects, the hum of traffic, mega pylons, the oil refinery’s intestinal tracts edge the land, wild, dystopic, a marginal co-existence. The tide is rising.

I am back here to see the sky. Clouds sweep in on a westerley breeze, curl, swell, froth, spill over, to the drowsy cow parsley in the hedgerows. A Ukranian flag flutters above three men standing by their sheds watching the world where the river meets the sea. Retired, off- shore workers, seen the world and then some, but home is Ferryden, always. Not Montrose, no, that causes offence. A chuckle. Beyond , the fields rise up , everything green and stretching. Ships in the harbour. Sixty to eighty jobs promised. They’ve said that before. Skylark and lapwing song mark the edge of this land. And then sky, just sky. Always.

I thought I would share this quote from a lovely chap named Dan Fairbairn on Twitter. I read it and was a bit stunned. Anyway I told him that was definitely going on my website ! Thanks and check out Daniel – @D_M_Fairbairn on Twitter if you like, oh and me also – @bourbonandwolfe. Thanks Dan 🙂

‘If @bourbonandwolfe was a poet she’d write four words and break your heart while simultaneously showing you the entire universe and blowing your mind.’

That’ll do.

No hump shunting, self storage. Two men crouch by a bonfire. ‘I’m not working on the train Julian’. Heading north of here and here and here. A whorl of white hair, hawthorn blossom. Angry tip tapping, Julian will be happy. A sigh. Flat lands, ponds and pylons.