among islands

Here in the mill, where I sit writing these words, there is a south facing window . . .

. . . from which, across the fields, I can see Dunaverty Rock, then the sea. . .

. . . and, when the weather is fair, the Antrim coast, which is just twelve miles away.

In one of my favourite of his poems, Angus Martin talks about how Antrim’s defining perspective is a part of Kintyre: “from hills south / I have seen fields and houses / defined on a swell of land / miles across undulate water.” On a clear day, from this coast, it is indeed possible to pick out individual houses and landmarks on Antrim’s opposing shore, and looking at them, on my daily walks, I often think of the time Tom and I have spent in Antrim, and how Bruce enjoyed Torr Head.

I fact, as I walk around Kintyre, I find myself thinking an awful lot about the defining perspectives of other shores.

. . .perhaps because they can be glimpsed from every rise in the road and every single stretch of coastline.

There is a particular point on the road out of Southend where, if you look to the east, you see the high hills of Aran while, at the same time the view to the west takes in the cliffs of the Oa, in Islay together with the glorious Paps of Jura. This multi-island panorama is absolutely stunning.

When we moved here six months ago (can it really be six months?) I found these glimpses of other landforms completely exhilarating, perhaps because of the very immediate sense they convey of what it means to inhabit a coastal place, to be in a landscape of watery edges, somewhere among islands.

I still find these island perspectives thrilling, but they now make me feel something else as well, something which is quite difficult to put into words.

It is something like what I would feel many years ago when, returning home to Edinburgh on a cold winter’s night, the train crossed over the high bridge near Berwick upon Tweed. Below me, in the darkness, the lights of welcoming houses flickered, and, beyond them, illuminated streets wound quietly towards the sea. There was something immensely comforting in those lights, and yet at the same time, from my elevated train window, the world they suggested seemed very fragile and ephemeral.

I feel the same kind of reassurance as I look across to these distant island shores. And the same profound sense of ephemerality.

It is something about the relationship of land and sea, and how humanity has shaped that. It is something about what it means to glimpse other ordinary lives, at a distance, in other ordinary places. It is something about time passing.

Perhaps, here in Kintyre, it’s something about beginning to feel at home as well.

The Angus Martin poem I quoted is “Antrim” from The Song of the Quern (1998)