Tag: holiday

Outer Hebrides: Father and Son and …

The word content lodges in my brain. Like sticky willies in a deer’s fur. One is missing but always with us.

Summer

Summer is in full swing
Songbirds stage a rap battle at 4 a.m.
Sun breaks through the blinds half an hour later

Gentle breeze barely noticeable
Goosebumps ripple skin
Growling you stretch next to me

Ice cream Sundaes fruity heaven
Intoxicating smells where ever you are
Ivy vines meander over the rockery

Lazy lizards sunbathing
Lightning bugs like nervous lanterns
Lady Luna lonesome at night

I hear the crickets in the cooling grass
Memory of the day’s heat tangible
I look up into the endless dome
Cathedrals don’t need to be made of stone

Echoes of Summer

Sugar Coated Toes

These are variations of the same theme. Reef bleach of the house reef—Bandos Island in Maldives—was heartbreaking and I tried to express my sadness but also the joy of seeing all the life that still is there. So here it goes: Sugar Coated Toes Outtakes.

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Sugar Coated Toes 01: Despair of a dying reef

My toes are sugar coated
With ground corpse of reef
The bleach process has killed most of it
In a vast landscape of dead white chalk
Three anemones cling on to life
Each of which houses a tiny family of clown fish
No it’s not funny
My heart breaks

Sugar Coated Toes 02: We pay with our future

The freight ship with three enormous cranes on top
Covers three quarters of length of the tiny island
More stuff no-body really needs
More dead reef
We pay much more than dollars for our needs
We pay with our future

Sugar Coated Toes 03: Life prevails

My toes are sugar coated
Sand gets every where
Life gets every where
Purple anemones with orange tentacles
Move with the currents of the waves
Bobbing in and out as I float above
A family of clown fish

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Sugar Coated Toes 04: Happiness

Sugar coated toes
Ready to splash
In a turquoise cocktail
Palm tree umbrellas
And puffer fish ice cubes

A Southern Indian Ocean Beach

Two heads of cacao coloured hair
Four brown eyes
Four blue eyes
Two heads of sand coloured hair
All four are dressed in turquoise

Two spoken languages
Hundreds of unspoken ones
As they hunt hermit crabs
Caught in a red plastic bowl
Alcatraz for sea creatures
Who were not fast enough
For double twin power

As soon as the girls turn their backs
Tiny spiky arms emerge
An invisible push
Tumbling down comes the first crab
Shiny shell-house and all
A second, third, fourth, and fifth
They run for the hills

A foot steps onto a loose heap of sand
Somewhere in there was one of the escapists