Island Return (Lindisfarne)

WE are back on the beautiful Island of Lindisfarne in Northumbia, UK. Here, at times when the island is cut off from the mainland is a deep peacefulness which could very reasonably be described as ‘balm for the soul’. We have been coming to Lindisfarne since 2013 when we visited in November and gained personal experience of why Lindisfarne is also known as The Isle of Winds! But that did not deter us. This  ‘thin space’, inhabited by saints and evincing a beauty which can be breathtaking, has called us back again, and again, and we are always delighted to make it safely across the causeway and be welcomed by the deep-throated song of the seals.  This poem emerged within a day of arriving.

Seals on the northern tip of a sandbank

 at low tide on a previous visit to the island.

 

ISLAND RETURN

With an hour of safe-crossing still to go,

we coast across the causeway

in our newly acquired, zero emissions car.

 

We are heading for our oft-visited

Lindisfarne retreat.

 

To our delight, the seals

are once again waiting

to slither off the sandbags

as the wavelets, inexorably wash over them.

 

Is it too fanciful

to imagine,

that the last heads

to bob above the ripples,

might be deniers

of the inevitability

of rising water?

 

September 2025