Summer Isles

 

 

I: Summer Isles

 

The mouth of Loch Broom

Sweeps all before it, curving

In sharp sandy grin

 

Butcher knife, gripping

The neck of Bottle Island

So fragile, glassy

 

The salmon fish farm

Feeds blood of Tanera Mor

Hook, line and sinker

 

Horse Island’s dead mares

Still canter out at night-time,

So white in the moon

 

The Isle of Martin

Rings the bell in the ruins

Marking the hour

 

Death of Priest Island

Stone circles ground to a halt

Dark granite toadstools

 

When the dark stones walk

They leave traces of their path

Through heath and heather

 

From Tanera Beag

Glass-water as a mirror,

The shimmering depths

 

Tides of Isle Ristol

Treacherous in turning their

Coats King’s Evidence

 

Eilean Dubh, blacker

Than original sins of

Samite-handed sand

 

II: Fodderty

 

The air of longships

Sailing down the firth towards

The pyre of the sea

 

How the wind slices

No matter the time of year,

Exposed to the cold

 

Harrowing the hill,

Teeth of the tractor tearing

Soft dark brown ribbons

 

Hill Difficulty

Like the Interpreter’s House,

A place of dreaming

 

Close to the spa town,

Strathpeffer, the derelict

Railway shrouded green

 

The Norse hills lour,

Reach to Scandinavia

With sounds of thunder

 

On jaded grey days

Mounds of granite raise their heads

Proud against the storm

 

The fresh field waiting

For me with open arms, where

I will rise again

 

Wave upon wave of

Memories cut in stone, where

Time will wash away

 

Their soft green blanket

Amiable in the sun,

Moss-covered relics

 

III: Solstice

 

The finger pointing

South-west in the Clava Cairns:

Writing on the wall

 

The light the rough draft:

Pencil on the longest day

Breaks on the worn stone

 

Solace in solstice,

The longest day hurls its spear

In hunting the dark

 

The dance of the stones

Moves in the clockwise rumba,

Tango in the night

 

Living in the light,

The dead hand of Callanish

Rises from the ground

 

Bright Ring of Brodgar

Welcomes softer spears of rain

Than the Dark Age told

 

Clock at burial,

Broken outstretched stone channels

Forever on time

 

Burial chambers

Empty now of kith and kin

All is passed away

 

Outward circle the

Praetorian Guard to the

Sleepers in the howe

 

The road goes ever

Onward through the way of stones,

Dividing moonlight

 

IV: Mitchell Hill

 

Polished pink granite

Holds letters like broken teeth

Smiling in the rain

 

Flies at funeral

Gorge the sweat of the mourners

Spreading as locusts

 

Monument rising,

In the skirt of its shadows

Grieving pleats of stone

 

 Living stone ages

In Morpheus arms of moss,

That decadent green

 

Hazy haymakers

Grind neighbouring fields gravely

For the chaff and wheat

 

Door of the Tower

Black mouth yawning through the rain,

The tears of others

 

Hearse driving hairpin

Like a black lozenge, slowly

Towards the summit

 

Sort of homecoming,

Everyone is coming

Home here in the end

 

Circle unbroken

Ranged so around the coffin

As the rising sun

 

The grass is growing

High over the stones, sprawling

In sharp shape of scythe

 

V: Somerled

 

Sea-lord of the Isles,

Dead hand of the boar still cresting

Blood-red shifting wake

 

Children of Donald,

Many more of the west still

Claim shares in his blood

 

Kingdom of the Isles

Hammered beneath the flat of

His fist, new order 

 

New on Iona

St Oran’s Chapel, its roots

Soaked in the sea-salt

 

Lively currents still

Chased in his Viking blood, his

Prow set to the sea

 

Warrior buried

In peace, long among the rows

Setting with the sun

 

His children fostered

Changes in the church, ringing

Out the last old Celts

 

Lordship of the Isles

A long-retreating shadow

Western sundial

 

March of the longships

Sculling between the slipways

Unstoppable beat

 

Echoes of fighting

Now long laid to rest still

Sound across the Minch

 

VI: Cromarty East Churchyard

 

Leprous with lichen

The stones ponder the long days

Rolling before them

 

Restored, the ruin

Lowers long over the graves

Belltower silent

 

Carpet of the dead

Growing long in the summer

Thriving in the rain

 

Stones hold up their signs

Proud to know their departed,

Those they stand over

 

Moss-covered tables

A lasting communion,

Spread before the Lord

 

Dark pours the gutter

Onto the sharp shingly path

The day of the rain

 

Sharp the scythe-sun smiles

On the flourishing grass, the

Life soon to wilt

 

Windows of the church

Slant towards Jerusalem

With the first red rays

 

Service of the dead

Committed by the living

Watching for their time

 

A brighter curtain

Bridges friends apart from this

Side of paradise

 

VII: Sandcastles

 

All seasons crumble:

Decadent Demerara

Into winter’s sea

 

Such a house of cards,

The highest turret cannot

Save from its decline

 

The coming of the

Dog days, darker nights, August

Leading autumn’s path

 

Last thermos spilling

River of water of life

The final picnic

 

Lighthouse looms over

Broken shell of sinking sand,

Its dying sister

 

King Canute never

Could stop the tide, no royal

Hand upraised would work

 

Blood-moon breathes over

Changing tides, struggling shipwrecks

Doomed to reach the shore

 

The ramparts falling

To the coming of the rain

Softer than the sea

 

The moat is flooding,

Drowning all inside, those who

Cannot run in time

 

The light is failing,

Holiday season over

Until the spring tides

 

VIII: St Regulus

 

One body further

Easter to the east than his

Neighbour, when he wakes

 

The cool of the crypt

In the heat of the day, the

Lasting stone silence

 

The peacock feathers

Fastened by the headstone, all

Vanity passes

 

How long the logs lie

Over the road, on the slope

So still, like the dead

 

Still the dead bell rings

From sunken Spanish galleon,

High in the Courthouse

 

Halfway between states,

Out of the town, now rising

Up towards the wood

 

Bowling green below

Like an Aztec sport, heads roll

Past tenpin shinbones

 

View to the Sutors

Oilrigs standing like spiders

Spinning silent webs

 

Road to South Sutor

Running, rambling, rough below

Pointing to the Firth

 

Still the stones slumber,

Turning in their broken sleep,

The grumbling grey men