A Land Less Spoiled
Our day slows down as last light paints the skyand you can feel the movement of the globe,hear gentle surf, the wheeling seagull's cry,watch land and sea in pastel colours robethis Wester-Ross where calming nature seemsa place of magic that itself redeems,inspires an artist and a poet's dreams.
You think perhaps Blake's feet in ancient timeswould want to tread a land unspoiled as this.There's little discord here where most things rhyme,and all is sensate to an evening's kiss,when no-one's going far and peace is soughtand found; for what this is cannot be bought,and things material count for little, less or nought.
Bryan Islip
It was this little poem, originally composed for the back of my Ardmair painting greetings card, that first inspired the novel Like An Angel Sings, published this day ref 978-0-9555193-9-0. Soon after I wrote the verse I heard of a certain young man who, wandering in the hills, had come across an old, abandoned whisky still; illicit of course. The cave also held a stoneware flagon filled with what would have been whisky (uiscea beatha - aka 'the water of life'.) The young man, consumed with totally misdirected guilt, poured the whisky away into the heather!