May 21st, 2008Hearing The Quiet Call
It’s a quiet, gentle, invitation in the end.
The rain that starts to fall, with a smile, as the car drives onto the ferry boat. (Never mind the sunshine in Glasgow, it’s time for some highland rain.)
The radio playing, jauntily, in the cafe at the marina, while I gulp my morning tea.
It’s the oystercatchers who arrive, on cue, when I stop for a moment at Sandbank and drink in the sea, the hills, the holy loch. Who fly by, calling.
Oh but was that the call?
Or is it the tea drunk in a warm kitchen on a sunny Friday afternoon. An invitation to stop, to chat, to make conversation amongst a community of eccentrics, away from the conventions of the city.
The tail of the dog, thumping quietly, as she sits at the open door, watching the sunlight, waiting for the invitation to roam.
I don’t know.
Perhaps it’s the call of the ferry boat, floating above the houses, drifting above the garden that watches above the quay.
But when I stop and think I’d say it was the birdsong: calling, laughing, singing, cajoling, exuberant with delight that I was there. Singing in the garden, laughing as I climbed up the hill, nodding with approval as I crossed the line and entered the wildness of the wood.
I hear you.
I hear you.
I’m coming.
