Our girl, a bit like lockdown, is still with us. A little worse for wear, having been tossed and turned to face the head of the Lough (Landfall Leeward Low Tide Lunar Bow) rising and falling with higher tides but still holding fast. There have been calls for tractors and chains - apparently fifty tons is a trifling weight to pull from the glar (Gleam Glint Glitter Gloaming) of the Foyle - to set her on course for the east, to be profitably clustered around the mythology of that unsinkable ship, gone unheeded as yet. The hauntology of the Day Dawn (Dayspring Daybreak Drizzle Dusk) her inbetween-ness, fluid and solid, river and mud, vessel and wreck, local and visitor, is perhaps what makes heads still turn, absentmindedly checking the waters (Wavelet White Horses Whirlpool Windward) for a tilting mast and now familiarly solid yet ethereal shape.
Day Dawn from Portavogie is a biblical name in the Scots maritime tradition. Alternating with family names, and when the Admiralty sequestered fishing boats in the wartime past, alphabetical terms describing weather, climatic and atmospheric conditions were used. The name Day Dawn, fittingly enough straddles both traditions, acknowledging day’s beginning as spiritual wish and earthly movement. The institutional naming is perhaps unintentionally but deeply poetic, resonant and concise as the Shipping forecast, sparky and tumbling as a nonsense verse. A taxonomy of over 200 words conjure up pictures and sensations of the air (Afterglow Airpocket Astral Atmosphere) the sea (Scintilla Seabreeze Squall Stormwrack) and the sky (St Elmos’ Fire Sunburst Sunspot Starlight).
We have just passed the paused time of the Solstice, marking the astrological beginning of Winter and the final full, Cold Moon of the year has risen in a clear sky. Also known as the Long Night’s Moon, the 13th full moon of this year and the last of the decade. The New Year (Neaptide Nebula New Moon Nimbus) is almost here, this Hogmanay night that faces backwards and forwards. In this year, perhaps unlike any other in our lifetime - although plague and pestilence have been a feature of many others - there is a sense, and hopefully a growing understanding and care, towards just how much our lives are still intertwined with the worldliness of earth, sea and sky.
So here’s to wonder and worldliness - Waterfall Watershed Watersmeet Whitecloud Windhowl Windshift Will O’ the Wisp