equinox
finally
we tilt sweetly
towards the sun
Pontycymer, Cwm Garw, South Wales
20th March 2014
Category: solas
strange lights
Last night the sky was weft with strange lights. They appeared first in the north: an array of subtle green shafts glowing gently across the back of the sky. They were uncanny, difficult to focus on, seeming still at a quick glance but moving almost imperceptibly with slight shifts and shimmers. You had to look at them only intermittently, as if visually standing back from them, as they hovered above the horizon, until gradually, barely discernibly, they strengthened and spread and eventually the whole north-eastern sky was shot through with a shimmering green shine.
That was it for a while. Cloud came, covering the green shafts, and the night became damp and subdued. We went inside to warm up in front of small flames of gold and amber but when we came back outside, the sky was alight. Soft ribbons of rose and green streamed towards us from the west, flowing upon us in long sinuous tongues, and waving and wafting over our heads like smoke. Their colours were paler than the brighter green of the shafts to the north but they moved so sensuously; flaring and subsiding, weaving and dissolving in and out of each other, stretching and illuminating the dark width of the night.
It was difficult to get a sense of their scale. Their display took over the whole northern half-dome of the sky, arching over our heads and homes, appearing infinitely far and intimately near, and seeming to move both quickly and slowly at the same time. And the light itself looked both alien and familiar, eerie and incredible. The night felt hallowed and hollowed and filled.
Eventually cloud came once more, and rain, extinguishing the lights, and the sky became blanketly dark. A few hours later, however, when we stepped outside, the rain and cloud had blown over and the stars had been restored.
It seemed surprising to see the night showing itself again. The stars were so white – bright all the way down to the horizon – and the spaces between them so black. The north star had pinned itself overhead and in the time since the lights had begun, smothering the stars, the Plough and Orion had wheeled well around it. Time had resumed now, constellated and clear.
Even after the stars were restored though, a low arc remained, radiating from the north: stalks of faint greenish light lined upward into the height of the sky, like the backlit stems of tall pines in an invisible night forest. But there are no trees here, only rolling ground, and stars, and lights.
Balchladich, Assynt, Scotland
27th February 2014
arc
Lochinver harbour, Assynt, Scotland
23rd February 2014
a rain of light
A rain of light – a fine white veil sweeping along the sea horizon like a swishing curtain against a backdrop of slate grey. There must be a gap in the sky to the south but it’s gone now and the illuminated downpour becomes absorbed into the wall of cloud behind it. The tide is far out and the beach is flat and gleaming and, as I walk along the lacy hem of the water, I remember another rain of light.
That one was land-based but equally short-lived. It didn’t pass past but showered over, tiny particles of water scattering around me like myriad stop-motion gems.
I was pottering about in the corner of an overgrown stone-wall enclosure beside a ruined cottage on a green hillside up behind Fairy Glen, behind Uig, on Skye. I was standing in the slim shelter of a silver birch and the light beneficently showered down in the late evening summer sunshine. It was a sudden refreshment, gone as quickly as it arrived. But it was utterly beautiful. For those few moments, light was domain and dominion, and relief.
Coney Beach, Porthcawl, South Wales
18th January 2014
let it begin
Season of old friends and new fires.
The sun was level with me at 11am when I rose, on the first floor on the high hill of Fergus Drive. Now, in the span of short hours, it’s fading, and the little fairy lights and Christmas globes that are strung along the mantelpiece glow softly. I couldn’t find the switch to turn them off in the daylight so they’ve been on steadily, but now as the room gathers darkness they emerge.
The streetlamp right outside the middle pane of the bay window begins to shine that gentle pre-orange red, and each of the droplets of condensation on the window glow. It’s only quarter past three but we are gathering in. My old dear friend will ring soon and we will meet, with his new love, and talk and eat and draw near.
Glasgow is always like this: an old city in a new night, with the rain picking up and the wind stiffening and the streetlights growing to their full orange strength.
Let it begin!
West End, Glasgow, Scotland
1st January 2014
evidence
We never see the sun itself but evidence of it – slanted casts across the brackened red hillsides, bright incandescences behind mists of white cloud, small patches of blue on the western horizon, or a gold-green stripe across the back of the low hills of the north coast, ahead.
When we get there the sun comes out; a rainbow doubles and disappears. The smashing waves are greener in their curl than I’ve ever seen, the beach smoother; the rocks holding it down are the heaviest black. This is the northern limit of our country. Everything begins.
Durness, Sutherland, Scotland
26th November 2013
winterlight
cold light on cold water
clear stream rushing over our bones
*
winterlight
lowglow
sheltersun
Nant Gelli Wern, Cwm Garw, De Cymru / Stream of the Alder Grove, Garw Valley, South Wales
28th October 2013
the green fuse
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
drives my red blood; that writhes the roots of trees
rouses my desire;
and my flesh runs with the rich sap’s flood
as my limbs spring with the same green fever….
When I lived in Montreal winters were bitterly cold, and so long. Even into March everything was still smothered in thick snow, gripped hard in grey ice. Other than the dark blue-green of a few conifers in parks, no living vegetation was visible and it felt like the whole world was held in a sterile stasis. By late February I’d start to feel a deep longing, an almost physical thirsting for greenness, and I’d be scouring the city for the sight of the slightest green blade poking or peeking through.
The first time I was back visiting Scotland in the winter I was amazed by the colour of city parks and gardens and would wander across lawns reverently marvelling at their soft green hue, brushed only lightly by sparkling morning frosts and giving way to stronger vibrant green by mid-morning; and when the shoots of snowdrops and crocuses came pushing through in late January, it felt miraculous. I felt that I had come to some secret northern paradise.
I’d kneel down to feel the firm fine shoots between my fingers, and cup their swollen buds in my hands trying to feel the force that was thrusting them from the earth, pushing them spear-like through the grass.
This year (now back in Scotland properly) the snowdrops came as usual, their fragile forms belying their hardiness, as they bobbed up and down through snowfall after snowfall, and I eagerly anticipated the (comparatively) early Scottish greening. But as the crocuses and daffodils waited coiled beneath the soil, the unusually late spring drew my green thirst again, as trees stayed bare and late snows and cold winds blew over the pale land.
Until all at once, everywhere: buds folding out green fingers, ferns unrolling feathered fronds and even the gorse bursting brightly, as the world quickens into flower, flutters into leafy green flame.
Oh greenness! Green for growth, for firm but supple strength; green for a fresh profusion of life. And green for gladness, for this force that germinates and generates, driving the flower, and driving all of us, in our continual and generous emergence.
Green for gladness; green for verdant, luminant life. And green for gratitude: for the sunlight coursing through the floral fuse and – as we go to greet it – for the sunlight pouring through ourselves.
*
Dylan Thomas, ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’
Strathendrick, Stirlingshire, Scotland / St David’s Head, Pembrokeshire, Wales
30th March / 4th May 2013
green light
Green light in the near branches,
in the soft mossy bark,
in the lowlit sun, slowly wheeling round.
*
Glas, Gaelic, green, grey; from Irish, glas, from Proto-Celtic glasto, green; like German glast, radiance, sheen.
Green glow, green gladness.
Strathendrick, Stirlingshire, Scotland
6th March 2013
lumen
Everything looks green and golden in this early, private light filtering through the branches. It touches the fingered ice on the burn, the crusted snow among the grass, rests on the snowdrops bent over by the heavy cold, and comes finally to the little wood-and-chain swing hanging quietly over the burn, and then – gently luminous – to myself.
Lumen, from Latin for light:
the space inside a biological structure, an artery or cell;
a measure of the total amount of visible light emitted from a source;
an opening through which light can penetrate, through which day comes.
Lumen: light in this channel of the valley, light in this channel of the glen.
Strathendrick, Stirlingshire, Scotland
11th February 2013