The Jay

By yesterday it had been hammering rain for two full days. I went down to look at the River Tay and knew I had never seen it so full in 15 years of living here in Dunkeld at the heart of Highland Perthshire. Parts of the village were flooded; greenhouses and the park were four feet under water.

This morning, Sunday morning, I looked out and saw there wasn't a cloud in the sky. There wasn't a breath of wind. It was still early and I decided to walk up out of the village into the woods to where there's a strange and special pond surrounded by rhododendrons and pines. When I walk like this in the early mornings I like to be as quiet as I can be. I want almost to become a part of the woods, to disturb as little as humanly possible. The streams were still gushing with water; the woods loud with rushing silver streams. But all I could hear aside from that were my own boot-steps as I walked up and up to turn into the woods and circle the pond. As I came round the far side I was facing east, into the low bonfire of the rising sun. And then I heard the shriek of a jay, and saw it flying low over the water into the sunlight. The mind and the memory took a picture. The blue flash and the beautiful nut-brown of the wings; the branches breaking the light of the sun. And when I was still remembering what I had seen, I began walking down the track and there were six young deer looking at me, waiting and watching. We stood, unafraid, blinking, as the rising sun shone over us.

Last night, before I went to sleep, I knew a poem had to be written. Of course I'm thinking of Christmas, and Christmas is all around me. In recent times I've wanted to write poems about the nativity, about the real reason for Christmas, just as simply as possible. That was my intention now.


When the miracle happened it was not
with bright light or fire,
but a farm door with the thick smell of sheep
and wind tugging at the shutters.

There was no sign the world had changed for ever
or that God had taken place -
just a child crying softly in a corner
and the door open, for those who came to find.






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