On the next day, Algy awoke to find the world full of colour again. The wind had gone round to the north, and everything looked fresh and bright and clean. Algy leaned back against the grassy rocks by the shores of the loch, and soaked up the welcome warmth of the autumn sunshine. He was reminded of some lines from a poem by Lawrence Raab:

          Although it is October, today falls into the shape
          of summer, that sense of languid promise  
          in which we are offered another
          and then another spell of flawless weather.  
          It is the weather of Sundays,
          the weather of memory, and I can see  
          myself sitting on a porch looking  
          out at water, the discreet shores  
          of a lake. Three or four white pines
          were enough of a mystery, how they shook  
          and whispered, how at night I felt them  
          leaning against my window, like the beginning
          of a story in which children must walk  
          deeper and deeper into a dark forest,  
          and are afraid, yet calm, unaware
          of the arrangements made for them to survive.

[Algy is quoting part of the poem On the Island by Lawrence Raab.]

Advertisement

Although he had enjoyed the view to the right and left despite the piercing wind, Algy felt that it was time to find a wee bit of shelter. So he tucked himself into a sandy hollow between the tall stems of the marram grass. From here he could look due west, straight out across the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, and into the dazzling path of the afternoon sun. Although it was too early in the year for crickets, the skylarks were singing overhead, and the whole scene reminded him of the opening lines of a poem by Lawrence Raab:

          After a night of wind we are surprised
          by the light, how it flutters up from the back of the sea   
          and leaves us at ease. We can walk along the shore
          this way or that, all day. Sit in the spiky grass   
          among the low whittled bushes, listening   
          to crickets, to the whisk of the small waves …