Streams always seem to whisper
something to themselves in the hollow,
Making each other laugh.
It is rather infectious
Summoning me back
To my childhood’s flights of fancy.
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But the woods crave our loneliness…
The woods crave our loneliness…
Trees we once climbed and swung from,
Bound with our sorrows and joys…
They have become companions
Disrobing us of our worldliness
Until we again become purple shadows under
Their leafy wings.
The sea is never lonely
I have spent mornings drinking beauty,
Walking along coastal paths
While growing wings
Spun of white surf sprinkled with the gold dust
Of dawn.
I have learned to love the sea’s every mood,
Cast unto rugged gray cliffs
rising steeply from blue coves,
Or Caresses smothered unto white sandy dunes.
But the sea is never lonely,
It is full of whispering, beckoning, moaning
Of some great sorrow
Or great joy,
Imposed upon the land without excuse,
While solitary humans, like myself,
wander, awed and spellbound,
On the outer frame of it.
Solitude is on the shores
Solitude is on the shores
Of Summer twilights,
When the sun is falling
And the old keeps its tryst
With the days it loved.
You will harness your soul then
In the dimming sea,
In the whisk-away surf,
Clothing yourself in the fairy grace
Of whispering trees
And rolling waves of sunset
Gradually disappearing
Into the lost lands
Of beyond.
Flower Lane
«People who shine do not need the spotlight»
– The Worst Witch
Summer in the countryside
White-painted wooden houses stand on gentle slopes on the green, wildflower hills of the southern coastscape of Norway. We locals call it simply «Sørlandet» meaning “Southland”.
All around, in every nook and cranny, the greenest grass you have ever seen creep up; emerald and windswept for the three months of summer.
June brings a flush of warmth and there are daisies in every possible patch of green; beside brooks, trails and roads.
Then, later in the summer, the trees ripen and spread their leafy branches up to the doorsteps of the white houses and the villages become lighthouses in a sea of green.
Two miles down the narrow road, just out of sight of the village, lays the sea. Here the scene changes. Large, open cliffs give way to little beaches and Sea Pinks and tiny streams looking for home.
Little lost islands, much smaller than they look, without shops or schools, dot the horizon. The only thing you might find here is a mooring pole crouched behind a cluster of Sea Pinks. Centuries of use has worn it down to a rusted sunset, yet it still clings fast to the land.
Next comes the farms, buried so deep in wheat fields and strawberry patches you can only see the rooftops from the road. Surrounded by open oldtime iron gates, these farms greet you with signs of self-picking strawberries and a rusted box for change.
This, with the schools, Farmers Markets and white wooden churches surrounded by windy birches, make up the Southland. Even with a few towns strung out by the seaside, it is still a land sunk in greenery and wildflowers, spun by its inhabitants, of love and unfailing kinship.
Mind the gap
Don’t let there be too big gap between who you are and who you want to be. I have myself experienced how much it can hurt when your aspirations do not coincide with your own needs and emotionality. Take a step back and re-examine yourself, are you pushing yourself to fill a void within or are you a well of abundance flowing over?
Relax, take a break, you are good enough just the way you are. Real love does not need to be earned.
