Remnant 2

THE PAINTING AND THE SUNDIAL

You are in a painting in a book, an image from the past, a man, in burnt umber tunic and breeches, walking along a sandy beach in the direction of a walled city that rises from the beach and the marshes, in ramparts of stone, behind which fine houses are clustered. Cheek by jowl, they rise to the highest point of the island city, where a grand, square cathedral sits prominent as a head-dress on a bride above the castellated chimneys and the regular streets and gardens.

It is an idealised image, of course. As you will know.

The man is tiny in respect of the city rising above him and which seems to be his destination. Or perhaps he is making for the low, thatched cottage that sits snugly within the walls of its own garden field at the end of the bog road that leaves a gate in the city walls and runs to the beach where the imprint of the man's toughened, bare feet dry promptly on the hardened clay, this glorious June day, as you return from fishing.

For it is you. Oak and stone. Present at all times in the story; there, you carry a wattle or an ash plant, perhaps a pole you use to reach the net you place across the mouth of the Penny Burn to entice and secure the salmon and the sea trout that assemble there. You view the gulls who squawk when you arrive. They flounce away, then confidently return when they see your back recede in the direction of the walled enclosure they know as a source of scraps and thrown objects.

You are oak and stone and it is an oaken switch you carry. Strong and lean, cut from the ground as a sapling, trimmed tight by your blade, now smoothed and oiled by your hands and the fish grease you toil through. Yes, you are oak. Strong and supple. Pliable and firm.

Your tread is purposeful and singular. You are on the advance. There are matters to which you must attend.

There, off the bottom end of the painting, only seen through shifts of space and time, another man stands, on an unused jetty of steel and concrete, astride a sundial, testing June shadows, close by where gulls define abstract line drawings in the air in swoops, hovers, dive and landings. This man, in suede, not umber, checks a pulse on the side of his head and looks sternly at the river corrugating in front of him, where the Penny Burn syrups out to meet the great flow of the Foyle. He stands on the raised metal letters and configurations of the sundial, his own shadow cast obliquely across the timepiece. When he turns to face back towards the city, he sees the quays, the riverside walk, the buildings that press hard to the water's edge. He even sees you, always there, your dark umber tunic a tiny sail in the air, your oak switch aloft your right shoulder. You are wearing a hat, almost a bonnet, to bring focus as you stare through water into your nets, thrashing with river life and sustenance. To garner shade in the June light of an earlier time.

What do you hope for as you progress to the city? Will the city deliver your dreams? Or will it dash them?