Walk 1 - Morning Light

Primal morning on 60N.

Sandwick's quiet. All I can hear are birds and sea - waders with such exotic names, shalder, snippik and sandy loo... respectively oystercatcher, snipe and ringed plover.
Dawn has begun in late July. In the distance lies Hoswick Beach from where I listen to the tide, new melody out of our wish. We left behind our city life, non-stop traffic, hissing sirens... For the first time in many years, I reconnect with our cosmic mechanism - in slow motion, just like those past summer mornings in Provence: gentle, lightsome with some distinctive scent in the air. Not rosemary, thyme or sage... Here everything yields to sea spray.

Here, like at the foot of the Luberon Mountain, our Earth rotates in silence. I feel so small in the garden.

So I witnessed birth of a day and called my piece "Morning Light".

This very first poem written in our new home was subsequently selected for The Pull of The Moon or Bicycle Dreams [New Shetland Writing Anthology, 2004] and the entire experience still feels like a waking dream.


Morning Light

Asleep,
I hear your voice,
I feel the sea;
lingering clouds caress
our hills - night wants to flee.
Drakness slips away
to the side
to let the light surf
on the return of the tide.

...Fast asleep,
I feel your hand,
I hear the sea;
strong like granite, my love
qand yours sing in a shell -
in deep ocean,
the song of whales;
on the water
morning light fell.

When fast asleep,
you roam my dreams,
we are the sea -
flowing abreast between skerries
now we can see
...light blue heavens where seagulls
fly & skylarks sing;
you are my life, my rock & blood...
not just a fling.

Now I can wake,
unlike the tide you'll stay
with me.

© Nat Hall 2001