Rocks and Shadows. Scilly Isles 11. Written by Richard Alan Gardham. Transcribed by Angela Gardham.

There are all these rocks embedded hard into the road, casting hard, dark shadows and the wind making bushes’ shadows dance. There was a little shadow moving over the beach very fast. I looked for the caster and it was a fast- moving gull. It swooped down, took something from the beach and then flew on. The brambles climb as they grow over the empty gun emplacements. There are small sections of rusted barbed wire that was there in the war years. The wind started to play with the sea making it blue then rippling to silver. Lemon green lichens feed on the surface of the rock. I leapt. The wall was high; doubt as I dropped through space, hitting the floor, well trained, rolling backwards to lay there, still. The grass was soft, the battlement walls towering above; a thousand little flowers suspended in space supported in its crevices. Two black machine-like beetles came tumbling through the grass. Their eyes were too near, it gave me a chill so I sat up to reduce them a little. They have so many legs and so many times to lift them over the never- ending grass blades, their black backs caught the sun turning them violet and silver. I’m bored. They become clumsy-the beetles, so I left them.

A gull swoops low then senses I am there and darts upwards to a natural distance. A lovely soft “butterfinger” has a crown of cuckoo spit. All those flowers to adorn an old battle field. A thousand little fires flowing down the walls like a glittering waterfall.

There was a girl sunbathing, her limbs soft and shiny, it was as though she had become part of the sun. A fly bumps into the head. I wonder if it curses for the inconvenience of having to fly around the size of my head. A dog sees me and its ears stick up but it doesn’t bark. I walked by a bush of yellow flowers, the perfume from it made me sway. A buoy bobs peacefully on the slightest swell, marking the danger below. Another fly begins to climb the side of my face. A little boy appeared, he looked at me and felt doubt and ran off. A gull stood on the high rock the breeze mocking its steadiness. He drops off the rock into nowhere then his wings mock the wind as he uses it to carry him along. The limpets are alive but dead still, as they cling to the rock pool’s bottom. Insects hover over huge boulders. You can see, just below the surface of the sea, masses of green hair sway, tangled waiting for the tide to rise, to be its comb. Little children, running, giggling, hair flowing down their young backs.

A fart, IT smells.