Some time ago I had an unusually vivid dream, a rare one that left me with a positive expectancy for days after. In the dream I wandered into an old dilapidated workshop. The roof had given way while glass and debris lay all around. Drug user’s needles poked up from piles of cans and broken bottles and a constant dripping noise echoed out any other sound. I felt very fearful and had to summon the courage to move forward through the building. Suddenly, as I turned a corner there stood the most beautiful exotic tree, quite unexpected. A clear pond full of plant and aquatic life was there next to the tree which had itself grown out of the stone floor. It was an image of sheer unsurpassed beauty in the midst of decay. A few days later I heard a radio Scotland interview with Colin Macleod talking about the Galgael Trust. I had not heard of Galgael until that moment but thought that the organisation and their tree logo related to the dream and the overall theme of new life growing from an old industrial landscape.
Birlinn fills the silence
The rabble of my dream-world stilled
‘A message’ brought halt to nightly adventures
There I was alone in strange enclosure
Beneath rusting iron beams on feeble tenures
Whistling wind filled buildings,
empty Twisted corrugates had given way to sky
The visible remains of a speech less tanoy,
Dry docks drier than bone dry
A place that once supported kind and kin
And enthusiasm for life’s gifts
Had now receded and grown thin
A tale of the wind that shifts
The solitary echo of falling water drops
drip, Drip, DRIP
Drills a hole in ones heart
A lifeless shipyard, broken glass underfoot
Where the threads of life depart
Used syringe that once contained liquid ‘bolt hole’
A serum to take one to the edge of known time
They were caste among the discards
Smashed bottles of strong lager and cheap wine
Each step into further fear,
the fading myth Wondered what it could revealed to ‘me’
And there with unapologetic place of worth
Renewal in the serenity of a tree
Root demands surface unconditional ‘life’
Branches sway to sooth conditions Inherent in common strife
A primary coloniser to an inhospitable place
Breathing, purifying the air
Where we still hear the whirl of the lathe
A wooden column of growing strength
That sprung from solid stone Points towards a state of being
Forgotten but not unknown
The threat of silence resisted, hammer falls once more
Who knows what the rigors of industry had in store
Building boats now to voyage internally to undiscovered shore
Propeller thrust superseded by rhythm of wooden oar
The bearing fruit and seed of tree
Caste in places that they once knew
And Birlinn fills the silence
Where the great ships horns blew
Desmond Mc Donald Simpson.
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