a washing line outside a croft house

Here on a line outside a croft

A suit has been hung,

A dark suit, old-fashioned,

The wear of some older man

For the regulated Sunday

Of a Highland kirk; its arms,

Filled with wind, beat time,

Remind us of half-remembered rhythms;

Remind us of the line of green between the sea

And the land behind the sea, that strip of flowers

And of whitened shells they call machair;

Remind us of that beat of the heart

That is this land, the unexpected vision,

The simple facts of being.