Hetha in the kirk

 

The Gore tex rustle fades, the hikers leave and I have the place to myself

Me and the tattered shards of the Christ god

The thick walls holding back the hills, the forts, the valley spirits

The winds from the slopes

The fires and fights

Battles and unions

 

("We’ll put a kirk here and God will come

And folk will come

Rustling their silk their sackcloth their tweed

And endly

Their lugged soles and synthetic skin")

 

And I will come

Blowing in with 

Gorse and bracken around me

Weeping burns and melt water

Rowan berry bitters

Feathers in my hair

Adder wrapped legs

 

The donation box rattles with my offering to the new god

My gracious nod to his sojourn here

And a sop of pity

For he fades as I resurge

 

I

Surge

Gently

He

Wanes

 

In this north place as yet

My new adherents are tentative

They take a curious detour to a standing stone

Tie a clooty scrap coyly in a hawthorn tree

 

South country I am stronger

Votive lights in chambered tombs and 

Rituals, hundreds strong.

They catch me endlessly on Insta

I’m famous on Facebook)

 

In this thick skinned Christ place

I stop in a soulless side chapel by the dismembered tomb stones

Apparently you sit or kneel in these places?

On this hard chair by this sharp altar

The Christ god does not make my spine tingle

Like the view from the high hill does

Does not invite fealty like a lichened menhir

He hides in this roofed pen

Like a sheep sheltering the storm.

I do not see him spanning the summits with me

Leaping from cairn to cairn

Like the corbies

Joined in the glory of the skylark’s hymn

 

I take my leave of the remnants of him

Careful to latch the door lest the devil get in.

 

(Kirknewton / Hetha / Yeavering July 2020)