Friday, July 10, 2009

The Black Loch


Just back and just about to go again. See you soon.



The Black Loch


We climb the track, and go
through the ghost of gardens,
stone seats melted to moss,
a heron frozen by a pond
lacquered with shoreweed.
There’s a gap in the wall,
and a bluebell path
cut by the edge of a burn,
but we leave fairyland
for wilder stuff, where pines
brood on hilltops and each
step slips on centuries,
a carved rock, a tumulus,
and all the while we sense in
the strobe of light a revelation.
At last through the trees,
a skin of water rippling with fire.
The Black Loch,
more ancient than the forest,
older even than the rock tombs
bound in bracken at its side.
Here the people of the parish
left gifts as their fathers had,
took the cold spring water,
while the Minister fumed
in his pulpit far below.
There’s no-one now,
nor trace there ever was,
but as we look at the surface,
flat as glass except for the tiny
needling of dragonflies,
as we listen to the silence
behind the song of lovesick birds,
it is easy to imagine a presence
that long predates our trying
to call the world our own.
What would you name it?
Not some red brick god,
nor love, nor death,
nor any currency of ours.
It is divine context.

4 comments:

Titus said...

Very, very beautiful.

Hugh McMillan said...

Ta dear. Jolly good luck tamara. Hope all your canapes are haggis.

hope said...

I love the mental image of the dragonflies. :)

Safe travels, my friend.

hope said...

When you get back from traveling the world, I left an award for you on my blog. :)