the closer you look

Last day on the 'Orkney-theme' (I promise!) - and here's a short excerpt from one of the poems within the pictured Andrew Greig collection, which was published in 2013 ...

... the volume recounts (in poetic sequence) the tale of his open dinghy voyage from Stromness, in Orkney, to the abandoned island of Cava:


Fractal

The shoreline of an island
one mile by a half,
when your feet have trod each tussock ,
when your hands have paused among seaweed,
hauled creels, stacked peat, sought pretty stones,
plucked mussels, lifted useful bruck and sea-glass,
is indefinitely long.
                                  Attention is fractylic,
closer you look the more there is,
each wee fretted island
                                 world without end.

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Andrew Greig (1951 - )

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