Grey Mist, Salt and Blood.

As I sit beneath the shadow of the great door, it's leaves bearing a touch of rust cast shadows of the signs of autumns coming, in the haze that is the end of summer my heart wanders, to another time,

when we were waiting.

This grey mist that surrounds us all, our breath upon the cold air brings sustenance to our lady's veil, thick impenetrable alike to the bare faced granite of our home, yet moving, seething, around and before us.

This ragged brotherhood, side by side, steel gripped by rock solid ice, stone cold hands, precipitation that drips into eyes from brow and helm, the taste of salt upon our tongues and the scent of blood within out nostrils.

We wait.

Concealed, hidden in the realms of our own doom.

We Wait.

Figures of the air and water surround us, twisting, turning beauty, the dance of the warrior queens, to goad our spirits, to spur us on, perhaps upon the winds of fate carry us home to the great hall of our ancestors.

Our hearts in our mouths, life's blood rushing in our ears, anticipation grows, the page turns and this saga remains unwritten, we know from where we come and step with honour to where we need to be.

But now we wait, we always wait.

A surge at this worlds end and we are pitched forward, our steady legs remain firm upon the deck as fallen land and empty shell make signature upon softer wood in a tumult of salt and spray, high into the air it flowers, this glorious arriving , each of us a part of this many petalled and deadly rose.

I am so alive, standing on solid ground I still sway with the poetry of the ocean waves, back and forth, up and down, this motion that would send a child to sleep or drive a man to madness is in my soul, a part of who I have become, I am ready.

Behind the shield wall, we wait.

Patience, a virtue not considered of our kind, yet driven by need we come, from Ice covered land and barren field, food for the belly's of our kin and passion for our ever starving hearts, the spirit of the great bear rises within, fuels those fires born of necessity.

The grey mist swirls its black and grey in and around our mail clad forms and,

We wait no more..

And so I remain, beneath canopy of green and brown, sublime beauty the eye never tires to behold, within a far off time and a far off land, I can remember. The ship, the family and my tribe, that grey mist follows me still, hides me from prying vision, carries me toward my doom and will always do so.

I wait no more.

Dragon prow-British museum

Flags, Flax and Fodder. Tony.