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THE ISLE OF IONA
Iona is the passionate, ascetic heart of Scotland,
protected by its own desolation;
grave of kings set in the veins of an icy sea.
The Tarot of Iona would include images
of its ancient abbey, with indwelling
devas, the white fringe of spray
ringing her shores, the cell of St. Columba,
the Christian lamb, the wind that speaks
this island’s mind to each pilgrim
who passes here.
It was lambing season when I arrived on Iona
and secured a room at the Black’s, in a shed perched
away from their farmhouse. Mr. Black was one
of many generations of Iona farmers, with
great blue eyes the earth had informed with peace,
with his own birds flying through his thoughts
and fingers that will be strong at death.
Mrs. Black was a shy mainlander he’d met thirty
years ago, she vacationing, she never really falling
into the rhythm of the sea-locked seasons here,
never quite accepting resident saints into her dreams.
In a stone-walled field
near the manse, at the sea’s doorstep,
two bent trees, fifty yards apart. Each evening there,
a flock of crows and one of sparrows would fly within
the strictures of that square, turning past each other
like a gust of stars, two motions of a single mind.
Iona seen through a glass darkly.
At night I would sit on rockpeak, under wind’s hand,
under a pierce of stars, playing the pennywhistle.
And never in day could I recall the melodies
that unwound, but my head felt like flame
and I felt visiting hints of Pan as
the music rose like Celtic incense
during the long night…
Iona is steeped in deep peace, as is Mull, another of approximately one hundred and forty four Hebridean islands set off the West Coast of Scotland:
THE ISLE OF MULL (Scotland)
Cloud and light clubs break over granite Mull.
The plover lays her polished eggs
in an open keep of sand and bone.
Waves roam down the earth’s slow curve.
High tors of lark song spur the wind.
The silence of the world mends here.
I sensed that the tranquility of Mull was like a balm on the wounds of our clamorous human world. Places like this must be preserved.
My sojourns at Findhorn and on the west coast of Scotland help me see how daily intimacies with Nature can tender mending and awakening.
Photograph by Leslie Oelsner
Born Kansas City, 1949. Began writing poetry and songs and meditating age 14. Oberlin College and Aberdeen University, where I discovered Findhorn and began a lifelong journey of the Spirit.
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