The Smell of Breakfast

I am out here by myself. I don't know why so early.

Out here on this balcony at this table with my bare feet and the sun shining brightly in the eastern sky making me squint.

Out here with this amazing view from this place where I've always wanted to be just once to be able to say, I was there.

Out here with a pencil and a journal lying open on the tabletop with thin gray lines waiting for the words to come.

Waiting for the words to come...

climbing sun in the east. blue sky overhead. green fields on the mainland. cooing doves in the trees. seagulls on the chimney tops. grazing sheep in the distance. windbreaks between the fields. swallows diving from the abbey walls. old bell towers covered in lichens and moss. castle ramparts overlooking the bay. cobblestones and narrow alleys. cemetery stones. steps going up and down. tide coming in. tide going out. benches in secret places.

breakfast!

The smell of breakfast is wafting on the breeze from some restaurant down below, and now all of the sudden I am hungry and ready to set this pencil down.

9:55:31 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Morning on the Mount

As they do at home on hot, sunny days, the doves here are cooing from the branches of the trees. But little else is here as it is at home.

From this spot next to (and above) the bell tower that rises from the terraced courtyards of the cemetery below, I can see the tides rushing out to sea. And I can see the clouds racing across a blue sky and passing behind the pointed turret of an old stone building across the alley. And I can see sheep grazing in the salt marshes.

Green and golden fields shine on hillsides in the distance. Rows of poplar trees stand as windbreaks between fields and the water. The sun is climbing up into the sky, beating down on this balcony. A cool breeze blows around the corner.

Sunlight bounces off the slate roofs, and off winding rivulets in the marshes. A seagull cries in the distance. The doves have stopped their singing in the trees and are diving and rolling thru the air between the stone walls of the closely packed buildings that cling to the sides of the island.

With the doves gone and their cooing silenced, nothing here is like it is at home -- not one thing.

7:31:39 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []