‘You have to come here’ I told them

‘But it’s so cold and wet’ they said 

‘Isn’t it?’

Sitting in a Highlands Café with a cup of tea

and a Highland Scone I wrote: ‘Dear People, 

you think you know about colour, 

until you’ve seen an early morning day 

cloudless over Gairloch 

through air so clear, this clean, 

noiseless save for the shushing of the sea

the calling of the gulls 

as if to you and me.

I swear that you can actually feel 

these lands of time-lost Highland Clans

so everlasting, wild, it’s majesty’. 

 

And so they came, our friends, 

and it rained and blew,

a gale of wind all week

(a different kind of beauty)

This Wester Ross smiles not, 

shows not herself always or so often

and they will come again, perhaps will stay

for thus did we; and this I know

to live is more than 

just to be.