Rail bridge over the Firth of Forth, Scotland
On a day when the rain makes those pattering sounds on the skylight window, I’m remembering a recent walk in sunshine from Kinghorn to Burntisland on the Fife coastal path.
The sun gleams on the water and 2 birds at the shore which might be purple sandpipers though I cannot get close enough to confirm this, they look like them, that’s good enough. These birds have recently been on my mind, as I’ve written a poem about them for an anthology of endangered bird species. (It will be out later this month, edited by Rebecca Bilkau.)
And 2 other birds, much bigger, unmoving, on the rock.
Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags visible on the other side of the firth
I go down to the sand, it is level, pristine, unmarked. (Except for bird footprints).
Lots of shells, white shells mostly uniform in size, a wandering line of them left behind by the tide.
But further on the sea is barely sea, just a thin sheen of water that catches the light and spreads it all over the surface. And that’s where there are lots of birds like sprigs or flounces of seaweed that’s what they look like, what they could be mistaken for, moving just a little as if there were tiny waves shuffling their edges, black and spiky. But these dark commas and fragments of punctuation are birds pecking at sand, examining the feast of tit-bits in the shallow water.
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| Arthur's Seat in the background |
The train from Burntisland to Edinburgh crosses over the water of the firth, on the massive red complex cat's cradle of a bridge. We travel through the flat countryside near the airport and there’s a plane in the deep blue of sky. And it is coming closer, coming in to land, and for me that sums up the day in its joyful appearance, its movement closer through the endless blue of sky, towards land, to its destination and arrival, this winged sign of completion.
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