The Island

Small island
of benign cattle,
quartz-veined rock-pools,
exotic trees
and runaway rhododendrons:
A chameleon island,
shape-shifting as the weather pirouettes.

Truly Hebridean
with its small, hand-moulded fields
and slow pale meadows, and
the flashes of white sand as the tide goes out.

But in a chiselled sky, it hardens
to shoulder the wind-borne rains of Shetland.
As sea-rocks darken and clouds come low,
sand blackens. I taste metallic air
of a sea-bound nation, far across
a cold, uncompromising, northern sea.

Then, in a flash, a rainbow erupts:
Sun-dazzled waves and sweet, warm,
blackberry-festooned tracks
through deep, lush valleys, recall Penwith,
and sun-drowned, southern afternoons.

But this island
holds its own keys;
makes its own future;
decides what to be
and to be what it chooses.

It defied all comparisons in Twenty-o-two.