The Isle Of Skye

The Isle Of Skye

Broken pancakes of islands on a sparkling, sunlight sea

Cradling a little white church, the winding road rides

from Mallagh to Skye,

Light headed from excitement and salt air,

We set sail for Black Pudding Island

Skye, a Renoir painting of orange skies, purple land, virulent yellow and pink sheep

A hidden beach, 2 men kayaking, one goes bottom up

I sit on a broken stone wall, hair blowing in the wind

Tummies tucked in, I feel glamorous

The lens discovers two purple penguins flapping

The zoom finds twins in identical jackets

Brown haired babies, picking pebbles on a stony white beach.

Anne’s blue Clock Glass House, nestled in a cliff

With the softest feathered beds in the world

Hot scones for tea with 20 kinds of home-made jam

4 girls baying at a red moon at the witching hour

Fresh lobsters at The Schoolyard, with a bit of melting butter and parsley,

And then our journey to the end of the world..

Where the cliff broke into ridges and the ridges leaped into the Pacific

And we leant against ancient rocks, bathing in the pink of a setting sun

I hummed a tune and wrote a picture postcard to my “bluest self”,

Explaining to her why it was all worth it , this business of living .

In A New York Minute

The curtain unfurls and the musical begins,

The underground roars kaboom, kaboom

Costumes and masks weave their way through hurtling yellow trains

Beaded knots and broken hearts, brief-cases and painted-over easels

I-phones and straightened hair, accents melting into impromptu conversations

The stage clears…

An ice-cream truck parked in the middle of Central Park

Shorts, shades and picnics,

The resilient joggers run to a fitness trainer

On a tv show, who keeps time, kaboom, kaboom

That noise again. The ghostly steel scrapers of power

Silently dance on a still pond covered in fall colours

A pair of lovers lean against an iron railing locked in an endless embrace 

kissing little crevices and moles on arms and legs

Chinese dolls with weathered hands and my grandmother’s silver hair

Bargain with many camera’d tourists

A few coins drop into a pool, a few into a guitar case, a few in a slot machine

The stage clears … that sound again, kaboom , kaboom

A Show within a show, The Rock Of Ages- plays tribute

To that great 80’s notion called the lust for life and then

A recently found old friend in a jalapeno cocktail pitcher

As the naked man strums his guitar, kissing mid-western tourists @Times Square

The stage clears and a ballerina dances across an old museum

She is a dream, she is sculpted, she is a billboard, she is the muse, she is art

Donated by merchants and bankers, a tear kisses a damask cheek and says

Here he is with his lilies and his yellows and his blue leaves and then

Right next to him that terrifying silent scream

The stage spins around, an old musty basement in a bottle of jazz,

A trickle of happiness running down a frosted glass of whiskied laughter

Fingers wrapped around melted artichoke pizza,

The comedian insults four Indian girls into a little corner

While an Ethiopian beauty rescues them with mulled wine

and her infinite black eyes

The Stage of New York welcomes actors from across the world

To play themselves in the unfolding drama of a city

whose underground roars Kaboom , kaboom