Burns Boat on Brexit day

Well well well, what a Burns day we had with the bard stalking our chat, our pages and the nation's exit from the union. Our Pat Sutherland wrote a piece about it... click the link

Sic a parcel o rogues

Happy New Year 2020

What better way to welcome you all back than with some more of Aileen's Lego art, this a depiction of Water Story mornings on the barge. 

We have a couple of new writers joining us this week and so shall we give them a taste of our writing with Helen's marvelous acrostic that howled out of one of Lesley O'Brien's wolfish sessions:

Laloba

by Helen Elsley

Lupine

Allegory

Lights up

Our

Barge-blessed

Afternoon

When all else fails....

... Aileen has a lego portrait of John... in the land of the Proseco drinking giants...

Scots Pine

by Helen Elsley

The space below a remnant
of Scots Pine forest
is beaten earth, shed needles
twists of fallen branches
lodgepole trunks standing,
warrened about the roots.

On the edge of the moss their
blue tufted clouds
furze far above my head.

Years ago, I was taught to read
discarded cones.
Exploded in a cyclone swirl,
they told a tale of squirrels,
red as the high branches
feasting in unseemly greed.
The neater crossbills
picked their careful harvest
from the armoured scales
of each dud grenade.

Sight and sound dulled down
to the branchless, rough-barked
trunk, I would have lost
their treetop call and coloured flash,
if they didn’t drop
their leavings at my feet.

Twilight, Gran Canaria

Our gatherings this summer have brought with them stories of water and nature from all over the world - writers' holidays. As we move into winter again the cosy woodstove cabin will be cheered by the memories of warmer places and times. 


Twilight, Gran Canaria by Pat Sutherland

The sky painter signalled sundown
with a primer of peach,
a random wash of silver-grey;
drew a menagerie of fabled beasts,
shape shifters transforming
from phoenix to turtle in an instant
against a backdrop drifting
between blush and crimson.
One burning bar descended
into black ocean
and was quenched.

"Trees" on Loch Lomond

Cruise Loch Lomond again played host again, on 20th September, to a glorious day of writing and pondering trees after Gerard Manly Hopkins inspiration... his "beadbonny ash"

Aileen's art is a breath of fresh air!

Porthole

by Pat Sutherland

Through the porthole
the trees pass in procession,
graceful branches Tai Chi swaying.
Dog roses drift in, blowing
pink kisses,
bramble blossom promises
bounty to come.


Nature has reached her peak,
her zenith of greenness,
parading in full uniform,
epaulettes and all,
waving her flags.

Today she cares nothing
that her colours will rust
and winter will snatch her curling leaves
and scythe her grass:
for spring will follow
to herald another summer
celebration.

Nature through the porthole
affirms the fatal dissonance,
our niggardly four seasons:
we bud and grow, blossom
and wither, rootless
 in arid earth
that knows no spring.

This day, of sun and dappled shadow,
of light on water
we will hold dear.