Of Art and Water (A Song for Bobbie)

This short poem offers a remembrance of Bob Coy, a widely-known and well-loved artist and musician whose iconic presence energised the Lorne community throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

My dear gone friend
Great lover of that sea into which you slowly slipped
In ashen remains of your once-laughing frame.

At first, a solitary bird.
Then another.
A flock soon wheeled around that billowing plume
Spreading beneath the circle of boards and bards
Gathered on furl and fall of Louttit Bay.

We were all there for your return to mother-water.
But that stark night, you laboured long alone
Then fell full still.

Your elements now curl through cold currents
And you are well-gone, long-gone beyond containment.

The birds of the air swooped into the sea that day.
They carried you to your new home.

Of Princely Monks and Waiting Women

Time in the cave may bring you closer to silence,
But the young child's cry more sweetly calls.

Entrancing chants voice old stories, enhance old memories,
But it is the one tongue that tells the time-held tales lived through every life.

The silence of the cave neither stills nor stalls the calls of turning worlds.
The glance of a full-blooded woman can dance you to forgotten times.

Wild seed thrashes through crimson bed, finding, fusing and fixing fates
That await their own awakening.

We are all free to leave. But some will choose to stay,
To feel the pain, to heal the hurt, to break the chain.

The princes have taken their leave.
The murmur of mothers softens the cries of those left behind.

Sweet comfort, strong as touch, sways through the dark nights.

Why walk on when you can hold another close?