. I am a new writer and have found myself writing poetry as an expression of the process of spiritual awakening I have experienced since April 2022, following a near-death experience fording a river in Scotland’s far north. Since then, my poems have been ‘murmurings from within the chrysalis’ as I have undergone a process of somewhat unexpected transformation that led me from remote corners of the Scottish Highlands to the depths of the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador. Nonetheless my poetry is deeply rooted in Scotland.

Geese

smell winter
closing in
it compresses
it clarifies
the land
and

you

take wing
spread out
you depart
you return
home
like

winter

Pilgrim at Strathcarron

Again and again rain,
Rain shattering amber light shivering
Over a shimmering
Puddle.

Noise slipping
Thievishly slipping
In
Into the silencing
Train arriving
Decanting:
(1)	Silhouette

She, side-eyeing my sprawling
Bags (life-in-a-car sprawling bags)
Then herself
Self-erasing
Back into the drizzle shimmering
Shivering.

Train screaming
Into silence
Into space
Uncaring
Then the before returning:
The sky heavy
Grey-blue
Shivering.

No Endings, All Endings

As Summer condenses into Autumn
With its slowing,
Its exhaling,
Its fluttering of the eyelids,

Yet one thing boldly crosses the threshold,
As though a daffodil
Were to emerge from rusting leaves:

A blackbird
With its waking song
As day
Races into night,
Blossoms into night,
To the joyous call of,

"This, too, is a beginning."