North Fife and The River Tay
Landscape and the long-distance call.


I perch on top of a viewfinder, a trig point facing the sun. An Iron Age fort. A settlement above The River Tay. Everywhere, gorse and coconut air. The tendrils of winter now severed, almost.

Convection and currents mixing the memories with the months and the years. The sun warms and the skylarks sing. Fragmented memories of a time long gone. A New Year’s Day ritual with a loved one, lost. An expanding emotion that comes with memory. The long-distance call.

The river slides east, always a constant companion. Rough stone and the promise of Lochnagar to the north. Not today.

Out-of-reach edges, sky spilling onto the hills.

Later, the darkened peach fudge of a Rothko horizon. Water at my feet that I like to think has come from the cold, silvered threads of Ben Lui. Perhaps it has touched the purple saxifrage on the higher ground or even the gold in the hills.

Cononish
Fillan
Dochart
Tay

Later still, the tangerine air, a tempting portal.
Fickle May and farmers’ potluck.

Time fused with April and June and adorned with ever-changing light. Mercurial May.
Dark, inky stratocumulus undersides and hope stretching as far as the eye can see.