Kathleen Jamie

When I found I’d lost you – not beside me, nor ahead, nor right nor left not your green jacket moving

between the trees anywhere, I waited a long while before wandering on: no wren jinked in the undergrowth,

not a twig snapped. It was hardly the Wildwood, just some auld fairmer’s shelter belt, but red haws

reached out to me, and between fallen leaves pretty white flowers...

There were eagle pellets on the summit of the Stack of Glencoul, spherical, the size of golf balls, composed of matted fur and bones. We’d seen an eagle earlier, soaring in the distance, and the summit of the stack was a nice scenic spot to regurgitate. It commanded a view, if eagles cared, down Loch Glencoul and its surrounding hills, out over Eddrachillis Bay to the waters of the...

Mid-December. It was eight in the morning and Venus was hanging like a wrecker’s light above the Black Craig. The hill itself – seen from our kitchen window – was still in silhouette, though the sky was lightening to a pale yellow-grey. It was a weakling light, stealing into the world like a thief through a window someone forgot to close. The talk was all of Christmas...

I hacked off the gannet’s head with my penknife, which turned out to be one of those jobs you wish you’d never started. It was a Swiss Army knife, with a blade only two inches long, and a diving gannet can enter the water at ninety miles an hour: they have strong necks. It was early morning, low tide, and I was glad to have the beach to myself. When the head was at last free, I...

Hands on a low limb, I braced, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher, heard the town clock toll, a car breenge home from a club as I stooped inside. Here,

I was unseeable. A bletted fruit hung through tangled branches just out of reach. Over house-roofs: sullen hills, the firth drained down to sandbanks: the Reckit Lady, the Shair as Daith.

I lay to sleep, with by my side neither...