Part of the joy of a holiday is I get the time to write some poetry – I read a lot too but writing poetry is my mindfulness – it takes me to another place, a space between thinking and being, timeless yet full of emotion. This is one piece and its genesis.

If there’s one thing that you notice when you arrive on Lewis and journey south to Harris it is, spectacular landscapes apart, the lack of trees. Apparently it used not to be the case but now, outside of the persistence of local gardeners the countryside rolls away uninterrupted, at times green beyond lush and at others, lunar rocks tumbled hither and yon. The other noticeable feature is that, while Lewis stays gently undulating, with its small crisp peat-darkened pools, Harris looms, glowering from the heights, corralling you into valleys with vertiginous drops and crystal sharp lochs. These contrasts prompted this sonnet.

Hebridean Love Rivals

Lewis and Harris, rivals in love
For the heart of the Hebridean Queen
Declared, in their ways, ‘I’m willing’ ‘I’m keen’
‘To the heights – To the depths – of my love I will prove.’

For Lewis, he rolled out his land so flat
And ditched and dimpled it, simple and neat

Purpling heather pushed up through the peat

And a granite walled castle with its ‘fáilte’ mat.
Harris laughed as he rucked up the earth,
Making mountains with faces dauntingly steep

‘We’ll live here, my love, we two with our sheep

Warmed by our whiskey and peat-smoking hearth.
But the Queen simply sighed, ‘Gents, if you please.
That’s all very well, but where are my trees?’