Plat, plat, plat, plat, plat, plat. you can hear the water splashing as its feet try to stand on it; break out of it. plat, plat, plat, you can see the spray and the frantic flapping of its wings
and then it is a softer plat and a softer whir of feathers as the bird whips along just above the surface of the lochan, leaving a series of concentric ripples spreading across the water and the return to what seems to be the silence of birdsong.
Already dawn is long past, but everyone is asleep except me, who stands by the side of the lochan; masked by reeds with brown tips and dried flower heads.
There is a bird in the tree besides me hopping from branch to branch. The sound of song. there are the ripples and small v’s of insects on the water. the tickle and nip of midges on my neck and on my hands. I wipe one off, leaving a smudge on my skin.
Below the sound of the birds and the occasional ripple of a bursting bubble or a surfacing fish in the water is the background hum of insects just buzzing; high columns of gnats, dancing flies around me, circling above me. down by my feet, in the black earth and the smudge of water against my shoes, I can see an occasional beetle or spider.
The water is as still as still and the trees and the hills are blurred with morning mist. It is a breathless morning. In the stillness you can sense a drip of awe and a wow at the almost oriental beauty of still water in the highlands in the early morning of a saturated summer.
I have to resist the urge to be present, to be still, to commune and bloom, mazy eyed at its loveliness. I smile and feel the wet cloth of my jeans against my shins from where I dragged through the vegetation.
I look in my head and feel a fizz of joy, then the need to dive into the future. I think of my love in bed and how, an hour ago, we were both wide awake. She, because of my snoring and me perhaps because I had realised, in the echo of my sleep, that I was snoring and that faint final reply to when I said I might go for a walk; those words that were accompanied by the smoothness of her skin a;
“Do what you want to do but I want to be able to settle again without your snoring.”
And that is me told and that is why I am besides the lochan looking back at the high wooden round house we have stayed the night in. A round house, where our room is like a trivial pursuit wedge and upstairs the conical roof with its wood clad interior that makes you feel wonder at its beauty.
At the edge of the lochan I think of last night’s wedding and the talk of those whose weddings are bitter memories and I think of my love in bed and I wonder whether we will marry and when I will stop snoring and I dive into the future. Dive headlong into that burst and shower of surprise, where my world doesn’t just turn; it whirls and flies like a merry go round. A merry go round of little children and places by the sea and all these new people and things to look at and touch with that wonder at what it all might be, what it might mean.
As I step off of the edge of my dreams with that great footprint marked ‘risk’ I smile and turn around.
I see me squatting; squatting in the past. Caught in a whole huge web of identity. I see my son, I see my wife and my job and our old house and I see holidays and photo albums brimming so full that I cannot even see my memories and then I open the albums and turn the pages, looking at each pale gap where my wife and child once smiled or scowled at the camera and I think
I will close that tight for the moment.
I will close it tight and I will slip away from the clawed memory of my shame and the bitterness of your fists and I will dance. I will dance like I almost did last night. I will dance like I did in the garden in the rain, when my love showed me how to circle my hands round her waist and sway against her. I will dance in that bemused way when she said that my job was to be solemn in the dance so that she could trip around me shining and glowing in the music, bathing me in a display of desire and letting me do the same with a slight shuffle of an awkward shoe and a hand to hold when we walked into the dark glistening lane home, after midnight.
Off home after the wedding was finished and we were all away home to dream of rosy futures and to wake and watch birds fly off of the still water in the dawn.
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