The Franciscan Monk & the False Alarm

From the Fife Coastal Path

 

 This is the best time of the day.
The sun’s low in the sky, so far over in the west, it’s almost north.
Starlings on the wires are quieter this evening – they shift from one foot to another. I think the sun has mesmerized them. The sun caught me today, entangled, disentangled me.

I’ll start again.
Slippery sunlight reminds me of the day close to the sea, on the Fife Coastal Path. Beginning sunny. But the clouds were restless and just when I dreamed of rolling down the slope in a tempestuous way because I don’t want to be good or calm or detached, I want to feel energy running through me like the tough grass that cuts when it rushes through my fingers – just then, the rain arrived. It came from the west, it snuck up on the sky and me, rubbed out half of the horizon and I opened my umbrella and the rain fell on my pen and paper but my head and shoulders, they were dry. I loved the rain just as I would have loved rolling down the hillslope, with its long grasses and its white and purple clover. It didn’t matter, I was clouds and rain. As long as I could be something real, it didn’t matter. I just didn’t want to have to dress up in my thoughts. But just be – rain, grass, impulse and love beside the sea. 

This is the best time of the day.
We climbed hills and faced the wind. My hair across my face, the wind tugs it one way, then another. It is hard to see, there’s one tree, it’s an oak tree, on its own. Beyond the ancient settlement, a dense wood. Just as we are leaving, the horses come. One after the other, to drink at the water trough. Three horses and one donkey. The leader’s feet are wide and round, feathered white fetlocks. Piebald. A trimmed Mohican mane. Horses on the hilltop. Rich as dreams. Handing out identities and names and power and hot breath on my face.

Later, there’s the garden in the town, copper beech trees, yews and sycamore. The tended grass. Benches to sit on. Empty apart from us. The sculpture of John Duns Scotus, created by Frank Tritchler, 1966, on the centenary of his birth. Scotus has a cowl over his head (he was a Franciscan monk) his gaze set on the distance, to the west and setting sun. He holds his quill, wrapped in his monk’s robes, in his love of God and his desire for movement, learning, travel, and discussion of the words of God and his steps move ever onwards, closer to his goal, to God and to the setting sun.

John Duns Scotus

 

Then there were the ruins of Hume Castle. It looks like confectionery, smoothed out, sculpted and irregular as cake that someone had already taken slices from but with the sugar icing still intact. Just yesterday, the masons downed their tools and today the sun hardens the masonry between the stones.

On the top the balcony gives you views in all directions. The hills, each slight rise and fall on the horizon, a crumpled decorative trim of earth, each fold and feature has its name – there is Dirrington Great Law and Rubers Law, there’s Horseley Hill and Blacksmill Hill and Carter Fell and so it goes, the ring of hills around the castle walls. 

And there’s a list of visitors: in 1496, James IV, and Mary Queen of Scots in 1566. Others were the Duke of Somerset (1547), and Cromwell’s forces (1651) though it does not say if Cromwell himself arrived. 
The latest visitor expected (1804) stood them up, though they were well prepared for his reception. With that view you could have seen him and his entourage approach from miles away. 
But Napoleon did not come. It was a False Alarm.

This is the best time of the day.
It won’t get dark but it glows, already, at the edges. I’ve seen the horses and the birds high on the wires, testing their toes and flexing their last evening notes of song. Soon, I’ll lie among the memories of day, hear the bees still humming in the flowers, I’ll let go and the lambs will settle in the fields and I’ll remember warm horse breath, black nostrils, damp chin from the water trough. The chiff chaff sings, the bees hum and the clouds are golden yellow.
This is the best time of the day.