The Windy Top

Aspen Tremble in the wind

The Willow up turn their silver skin

Among the Yorkshire fog that sways

Upon the hill Dun Deardail way

A moving spirit whose pitch and toss

Is that invisible force to which

The grass seeds are at a loss

What makes the wind blow?

Why do we feel these molecules

Become our consciousness?

Our minds are the grassy fields

We have flesh that is of the earth

And souls made of the wind

And when the wind blows

We may lose ourselves like

The mind set free from the skin

I sat upon Dun Deardail hill

And listened to the wind

The sun was an eye

In the blazing blue sky

And the summit’s voice all surrounding

Down from their crests the cold cries flew

As messengers with some God given truth

And they laid their wordless meanings down

On the grass blades of this hill fort roof

The foggy sway of the seed heads

The bend and lilt of the wild flower

Showed just how nature would obey the voice

Of the Mountain’s power

The wind was blowing still as I left

And followed the winding path down

But I had been warmed on the Fort’s sunny crest

That sat on the hill’s head like a crown

How do you know the Sea?

How do you know the sea?

It is salt packed

Resin baked in obscurity

It is floated

Pine –goated, sure throated liver

Which sings for its meals

From the God-cloud giver

It is rain-hungry swaying mountains and mounds

Which sway in the graveyard of heart thumping sounds

It is beneath the surface and underneath the skin

The greatest secret ever kept from the opening

How do you know the Sea?

You cannot really know unless you’ve searched

From the Loch to the quay

Running on the Mountain

Thunder on the Mountain

And a rumble in the heart

Blood curdles in fountains

The red burn sunders apart

Everybody is running

I want to run too

I want a beginning in some place new

All my life is running

Together through the stream

Like Salmon swimming

Uphill trying to reach the impossible dream

Everybody is running

And time is running out

The bream is fresh

With new life I don’t begin to doubt it

Union Road

The union is undressed

It lies naked as a flower

Here and there the clouds graze low

As planes beside a tower

The mists of the forests sweep down

As sleep descends on Fort William town

And the black loch lies like a dragon

Deep in the confines of his bower

Black are the pools

And cold as a throbbing heart

Eecking out the stress of the years

The way an urchin eats a tart

Gorging on the succulent moss

And sobbing on the green rock

The mountain bleeds with pine seeds

The way a bread loaf falls apart

Living on Union Road

I’m living on Union Road

But we are so divided

My mind is two sided

And this country is in the jaws of a shark

A tree lies like a match on the slope side

Then a thousand more over the park

But a puff of smoke by the rail side

Is enough to cause a forest to spark

Puff on old Billy, puff on

The rebels are hauling their chains

You can hear them in the falling rains

Laying the sleepers to Lanark

You can feel the Jacobites march

That footfall in the Glen through the dark

Now that Scotland will be free once again

All it takes is a steam train to spark

Oh the Union is undressed

And lays like a flower in the cold

Standing as the Thistle grows

Ever new to the fight

Ready for  a war with the Rose

Living on Union Road once again

Yes I’m living on Union Road

There is method in the madness

And tears in my sadness

While I’m living on Union Road