Advent

Today the snow arrived in earnest. The village of Dunkeld, encircled by its hills, was slowly turned white and silent by thick flakes driving out of the west. For some reason I thought in the evening of Iona, that spiritual home off the west coast of Scotland, which from childhood has been somehow my purest home. I know that will sound contrived, but it's the truth. I remember that about the age of four or five I started having strange and vivid dreams of the island, recurring dreams that haunted me and do to this day. And when I'm back now, when I'm on my own and walking against the wind into the west, I'm not an adult any more - I'm no age at all. I'm just myself, the self I was meant to be. All that foolish, false layer that we wrap ourselves in is taken away. I feel myself again, and whole.

But I haven't been to Iona this year: not once. Normally I run a writing course there in the autumn at one of the hotels, but not this year. And so I'm missing it, because it's too far removed from the mainland to visit at a whim. Getting to Iona, even from inland Scotland, is something of a pilgrimage in itself. And that is good, except when, like now, I yearn to be there even for a few hours.

Here is one of the poems I included in my book 'Iona, the other island'. It's about a real stone that I found not long ago on St Columba's Bay at the very south end, one of the precious green stones that are translucent and polish into marbles of light. It seemed appropriate for the first Sunday in Advent.


A little cave of green stone,
smoothed by centuries of sea
to a pebble small as a pinkie nail -
chanced up out of the waves' reach.

Hold it to light and it changes,
becomes a globe of fractures -
a cavern of ledges and glinting,
not one green but many at once.

And suddenly I think of it bigger,
as the whole of the human heart;
carrying the cuts of its journey -
brokenness letting in light.


'Iona, the other island' is published by Saint Andrew Press