In this cold northern outpost little penetrates the rain even memories, once bright have to fight to be sustained because here all colour fades to monochrome confronted by the onslaught of the elements, the flaying of the waves, nature's way of showing us disdain. I have thoughts of you in pales and greys - on quiet days I try and hear your pulses on the airwaves but your signal is too weak to battle through the heavy static since 1983: you could not now reach my antennae without difficulty. The only thing I clearly hear: defiance from the bleak rocks standing fast against a pounding sea giving way grudgingly with violence converging on the cliffs - this neverending rift of attrition breeding strength to those born of east coast stock - here the hardihood is bred in the blood. Without you, here as anywhere, I am just another incomer to the tides of life, the ebb and flow, the to and fro, never understanding why I dash against the hardest stones that you alone could save me from. Your sustenance has lost its power to feed me from afar, your wisdom is too quiet, distant, dim to lance the din of storms and uproar here - your morse code fading with each year - I feel your salt and pith drain from me slowly drop by drop of living pain until now at this point in my life I must rely on the right kind of luck to survive - the intermittent dot and dash of you which does struggle through despatches me the message: I only stop paddling against the tide when denied the choice so to do and not before - but when I stand like this without you on the shore and in the wind and rain too long they make me raw, forlorn, so much the poorer for your lack all I have is wealth of wind and water, tide and time, not enough to make your signal strong not enough to bring you back.
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