Lyrics
Luskentyre
So this is how you build a kite:
It starts with the idea that flight
Renews the sacramental tie,
Ordained between the land and sky.
You find a stick where life was lost
Within the winter holocaust,
Then break it at its weakest point,
And make a cross and bind the joint.
And next you’ll need a seamless rag,
That’s rescued from the rubbish bag,
But notice how it lives again,
When stretched across the simple frame.
And now a most important thing:
There is no kite without a string,
Dead leaves and litter drift by chance,
But only ties can let you dance.
But even now, it’s best you know,
There’s nothing if the wind won’t blow.
So wait and nurture your desire,
Down by the shore at Luskentyre.
The breeze will come - it always does -
To warm your doubting heart like love.
Then run for joy with all your might,
And that is how you build a kite.
Kames Bay
I found myself one summer's day,
Deep in the woods behind Kames Bay.
Metal-detecting, ten years old,
Head full of hope and pirate gold.
I felt I held a microphone,
That listened to the world's groans,
So two hours silence seemed to me,
The answerless eternity.
I heard it said, what’s buried in the ground,
Is waiting to be found.
But when despair was drawing nigh,
The earth gave out a primal cry,
I dug and found within the dust,
A silver chain that saved my trust.
'It's just a piece of tat," they said.
"Don't let your luck go to your head."
But that chain still hangs round my wrist,
And when it's silent cries, "Persist."
I heard it said, what’s buried in the ground,
Is waiting to be found.
Ayrshire
I held the balloon you gave me tight,
And wrapped the cord around my wrist,
Until my bloodless hand turned white,
And frozen in an angry fist.
So I kissed the balloon you gave me hard,
And threw it to the Ayrshire sky,
And watched it dance beyond the yard,
Knowing it was made to fly.
My fingers prickled as I waved,
To where the balloon flew out of sight:
It’s hard to let go what you gave,
But harder still to hold it tight.
Naseby Park
I’m in Naseby Park with my only son,
The leaves are turning, a season’s begun.
We kick the ball over the golden grass.
He backs away from me, testing his pass.
“Watch this,” he calls, and gives it a whack.
When it rolls towards me, he moves further back.
I think about the relentlessness of time,
One day his pass will test the strength of mine.
So I will teach him all I recall,
True connection, rhythm, eye on the ball.
I hear my own dad’s voice, his words are like prayer,
The ball is a comet through the autumn air.
Away he runs to the edge of the park,
Trying my creed in the gathering dark.
Loch Morar
The rope I’d hung to make a swing,
Misshapen wire from uncoiled springs,
A tether washed up on the shore,
The pull-cord from a long-seized mower;
Old laces culled when shoes don’t fit,
A scarf my mother left half-knit,
The string cut from a broken kite,
The lock-chain from my stolen bike.
I gathered all these useless things,
And tied them tight in one long string.
Along the shore, I laid it straight,
And stumbled on the perfect weight:
A skull shaped granite, almost white,
I rolled it close and bound it tight.
The loch was still as death the day
I rowed it out, about halfway.
The surface bore my mirrored twin,
He shattered when I cast it in.
The hiss of disappearing line,
And ripples spreading all the time.
Nobody knows, how deep Loch Morar goes,
Nobody knows, nobody knows.
I braced the end around my back,
And waited for the rope to slack.
I thought about the ghostly stone,
Descending through a world unknown:
A myst’ry black as creosote,
But light enough to let me float;
A hidden realm supporting mine,
Unfathomed from the dawn of time.
Then suddenly the rope was spent,
Before the end of its descent.
I stretched until I near capsized,
And came up quickly half-baptised
Uncertain I had found the floor –
The rope was vast; the loch was more.
And angry that I could not know,
I very nearly let it go,
But piqued by what it may yet tell,
I drew it back as from a well.
Or like the world had been upturned,
I climbed the rope and I returned.
Nobody knows, how deep Loch Morar goes,
Nobody knows, nobody knows.
It felt as though an age went past,
Until it rose again at last,
Transformed somehow before my sight,
It sparkled like a ball of light.
For all the world a pearl of price,
I rowed home touching paradise.
My worried dad was on the pier,
His boyish face was lined with fear.
‘Where have you been?’ we hugged; he cried,
Three weeks before, my mother died.
Nobody knows, how deep Loch Morar goes,
Nobody knows, nobody knows.
Luing
My parents in the thick of war,
I fled the cottage to the shore.
A scythe shaped beach beneath the pier:
The perfect place to disappear.
I picked a round slate from the sand –
A pirate’s judgement in my hand.
I cast my stone against the floor,
It shattered in a hundred more.
A man sat mending nets nearby,
He looked up and he caught my eye.
“There’s more that you could do with those,”
He smiled as he wandered close.
He knelt and found another disc,
And held it like the Eucharist.
Then bowing as he turned away,
He skimmed his slate across the bay.
I felt I’d seen a miracle,
The dancing stone so beautiful
I wished my eyes were made anew,
Before it disappeared from view.
Remember I was only eight,
And kids from cities don’t skim slates.
He read the wonder on my face,
And answered, “Luing is a thin place.”
The Black Isle
It was winter off the Black Isle
and the sea was like slate.
The sky hung like a mourning gown
on the narrow strait.
In the boat my useless fingers
fumbled hook and bait.
It was winter off the Black Isle
and the sea was like slate.
There was something in the silence
and the slow insistent tide
that shook something loose within me
I’d been working hard to hide.
Caught between the ocean
and the truth I’d long denied,
there was something in the silence
and the slow insistent tide.
I beat the oars against the current
like the water was to blame
and a feeling broke the surface
that bore an ancient name.
On the wind that whipped my face
the hellish whispered word of shame:
I beat the oars against the current
like the water was to blame.
I was breathless, bowed, surrendered
to the unrelenting sky
when the ocean broke before me
and a whale lifted high.
Outstretched, as on a cross,
he seemed to look me in the eye,
and left me breathless, bowed, surrendered
to the unrelenting sky.
In the silence of that moment
it seemed a gift of grace,
that passing years and fading mind
have had no power to displace.
My ancient wound met deepest ocean
and He held me in embrace.
In the silence of this moment
it seems a gift of grace.
Cuillin Sound
The snow goose that I nursed last year
returned to me today,
As I hung my washing in the yard,
he landed in the bay.
The same black spot upon his heart,
the same lamenting cry,
The same unanswered longing
drifting through a silent sky.
I remembered when I found him,
on the day you went to war,
And my father said he’d never live,
but I hid him in the store,
And fed him all that summer,
till long after he was well,
Long after you went missing,
till the day they said you fell.
On the morning that we laid
your empty coffin in the ground,
I took him to the hilltop
overlooking Cuillin Sound,
I kissed his blackened heart
and gave him over to the sky,
He beat the air and soared beyond
the land without goodbye.
Now he’s here and you are gone,
my love, he’s here and you are gone.
And there’s nothing I can do, my love,
but weep and carry on.
What is this mystery of life,
that we so love what cannot stay?
How can I be where I’ve always been,
and you be far away?
Will you return to me, my love,
as this ghost bird did today?
In this life or the next, my love,
is there a better way?
So this morning I will work
while I hear the snow goose cry,
And strain within in my heart
to find the still small voice reply.
Lismore
The night before I left Lismore,
I wandered to the twilit shore,
And on the naked shingle heard,
The low tide’s long retreating roar.
The noise was like a babbled word,
An echo echoed till absurd.
I called out to the disarray,
But only made a broken chord.
Yet where the sea had ebbed away,
An anchor rusted in the clay.
And standing like an eremite,
He held his flukes out as to pray.
Though Lismore’s now a distant sight,
Still often in my dreams at night,
I wander in the failing light,
To glimpse the shoreline anchorite.
Glen Coe
The call arrives too late to be good news;
I wake and answer like a drunk confused.
A fragile voice hangs on a troubled line,
“Come quick, your father’s nearly out of time.”
Great Western Road deserted, 3am:
Behind the wheel and heading north again.
Eleven years and still I know each turn,
Old habits are the hardest to unlearn.
Behind, the glowing city’s fading fast,
Ahead, the years of questions never asked.
Beyond the headlights, endless silent black,
All signs are just reflections staring back.
Along the moor the signals fade, then die,
The lochans still, like shards of fallen sky.
Before the dawn, thick fog fills up Glen Coe,
No calls connect; there’s nowhere I can go.
You gave me, father, life without a chart,
No sovereign but my own capricious heart.
A freedom that determined me alone,
Disinherited, hesitant, wind-blown.
I leave the car, and stumble through the mist,
Then morning breaks the ancient mountain crest.
Ahead, an iridescent figure looms,
A brocken man transfiguring the gloom.
A presence somehow intimate and wild,
I hide my face in fear, yet he beguiles,
An ageless power taking on my frame,
My shadow held within a greater flame.
The fog lifts, I get in my car and drive;
The spectre on the hill remains alive.
I dial the number I could not forget,
Leave old Glen Coe, and hope the call connects.