In the cove, rock pools reflect fast moving skies until the rising tide blankets their light. Moods are fleeting here, like a storyteller’s thoughts they fade with each chapter of the day. Slow streams of visitors pass gleeful eyes as low tide exposes golden sand and tiny explorers find joy in disappearing footprints at the waters edge.

Come sunset the peace returns, the downtrodden heather and clover shake off that weight. This feeling is a feeling shared throughout the seasons here. The day tripper’s scars remain, but with their departure freedom reigns again.

On warmer days this scene is replayed and the path to the cove fills with noise, chatter and baggage. They come, sunglasses so big like a swarm of multicoloured flies to stand and complain of no signals as another selfie is queued in a back catalogue of repetitive poses. The beauty is lost on them.

To know these waters is a blessing, I feel the strength of the tide at the edge of winter and awe washes over me…..

From the window on the landing a view unfolds, lichen splattered tables bearing scars of saltwater westerlies that prevail the shortest days here. The ocean murmurs in the distance…always.

February the blank canvas of months awaits the artistry of nature’s hand, the real genius of life is to exist with awareness of what’s beneath every landscape we walk upon. We are merely tenants, caretakers and all ownership diminishes like chalk cliffs. We strive to be kings and that’s our downfall.

The roses of a summer past still cling to withered stems, no winter gale quite strong enough to break their bond. To sever ties too early is never in their design, for the rot sets in when the ice finds the freshest cut.

In spring the buds will form, new life perpetually calling, these blooms will fill vases in every room. Winter chill will be replaced by heady blousy lilacs that cascade on a warm and gentle breeze. I will not flounder here, through restoration not replacement happiness reverberates.

Through all its incarnations the house remains unchanged, like a ship repainted dripping in repair, a life lived, scars less obvious, but intact.

The staircase in part reclaimed by nature still grand. On the walls faded outlines of portraits and family trees, layers of time shedding skin.

Stories endure here, echoed scribblings from the writer’s pen, captured and encased unhindered by the present. Tenacious are the dreams that walk these halls.

Veins of melancholia climb like lianas seeking strength firmly rooted in another time.

Light still fills this space. A coloured spectre filters through stained glass to dance upon these walls at sunset before it sinks beneath the land. For now the house belongs to moonlight.

In amongst the oldest shadows of this house, on pages strewn in the ebb tide of winter the storytellers memories lie. Skeletal lines await a passing glance that they may live again.

As March approaches, thin splintered sunlight finds a pathway through the shuttered windows. Dust rises and falls, silently, not quite a whisper in this muted damp air, but spring will bring life as it will bring hope and desire.

Faded damask worn from life, like a thread erased and replaced with stories. How a thumb caressed the smooth silk pattern that meanders there still, maybe in shadows creation lingers here.

Bookshelves of a dreamer scattered spaces still to fill, trinkets of stone and bone, of feathers and seeds. Portals to an existence yet to be heard. Can a room dismissed to history narrate without words. Is death the final page of everyone.

Moonlight changes everything and lends its sparkle to the eyes, shadows lengthen and fall beyond these walls, silently they evaporate boundaries, they become pathways through the dark to the dreamer now.

The land is at rest within shallow breaths of the waters edge, ripples unfurl like the deepest sigh of a weary traveller who knows not how he came here, but is thankful for the pause in this tempestuous life.

Water takes on its darkest hue, blackest liquid to stain the night with mystery. The interloper returns through this ink filled inlet, to explore, to be enthralled.