It takes ten minutes of silent walking to reach the sea.

That is to say, my feet sound on the steps going down,

My breath moves the air between the hairs in my nostrils,

The wren, the blackbird, the wood pigeon, robin and goldcrest

Coo and twitter and trill as they compete with the traffic,

But I don’t speak,

I’m not thinking the constant thoughts that filled the waking hours of the night.

There’s a hush in my head as of a room before a meeting, papers lying crisp

Like a stillness I’ve left in the house behind the closed front door,

The quiet of the Cathedral in Kirkwall at the end of the pilgrimage

When the evening sunlight pitched stained-glass rainbows around the pillars.

At the corner, I cross the road and imagine I hear the muttering

Of the man in the car waiting for the lights to change:

‘Alright for some, swanning off for a swim when the rest of us are going to work.’

And he turns up the volume; People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening, as he pulls away.

In front of me, slate blue ocean is bordered by the Eastern Breakwater,

The tide is out and the beach is full of sand and seaweed and feathers and Just me.

And as I wade into the sea, a tern angles ninety degrees and plummets,

Splits the sky and the surface,

Reappearing after a moment with a silvery fish,

And flies off.