Opera

 Well you gave me the choice to turn

And in grace not lose the voice that

I brought from my face

That howled in the wind

Of the afternoon opera

Well you gave and I took it

You gave the choice to turn

And in the grace I must learn

To embrace the new

While I release the old

That is the only life that is true

Move on, move on he said

And the snow winds blew

On the mountain tops head

And it was new and oh so true

That Scotland was the way ahead

I knew

Mountains

Mountains are like nerve bundles tied up in knots

Tense packed strings of wires fossilized, baked

Bended, frozen

But before these feeling times of tumultuous floods

And bruising, burning, tortuous

Moments had been forgotten

They survived as eviscerated rocky facades

Flakes of time millimetres thick only

Lain down like rings in a tree

Buzzing in the Nerve tree

In the roots of the bundle of the body of the land.

Red Burn

 Down from the dark, titanic mounds

Runs the Titans blood

Sometimes white as milk

Sometimes dark brown

Dirty blood from its deep arteries

Over salmon flesh, over cod yellow

Over the red Wrasse fish body

That heaves in the Glen

Whose gills breathe rain water

Whose lungs are damp caves

Whose Leviathan mass lies

In these watery graves

 

Whose back is a whale- une Roche Baleine

The whale bone ribs have been bent into waves

Whose oil and blubber are buried deep underground

And ambergris in its gut are the minerals yet unfound

They’ve been hunted by Geologists with their hammers like harpoons

Ready for the conquering like men who want rock from the moon

River

 The river babbles, shelves in clam-like semi-circles

These C letters it is spelling out

Constantly, clattering, changeling

Calling in chains

That run like white sausage strings

Over stone rails

Bulbous and fat as onions rolling

Down a cobbled hill

Chattering and chasing each other as children do

Racking and racing as horses out the stalls

All from the starting line over the head of Steall Falls

Dragon Fly

 Little beastie

Fearsome in is proud mantel

Scales of multi-colours

Wings of thinnest hair netting

Squashed so its guts spilled out

Trodden under foot of exploring geologists

In their rush did they find the rock was still there?

Did they try to squeeze Life out too from that?

Like blood from a stone

I don’t care

Skin and bone and hair that is where life is

We are like hurricane hunters chasing after

Something that is already dead

This is red, that is not

Time is not dead though

Time ages and we can only remind ourselves of by how much

Of by how unimportant our lives are by looking at Rock

Hard, never blinking, always staring no matter what

Rain gets in its eye, 

Like Heroes of the old world

They survive or don’t quite out last everything

Slowly decaying eroding

 

She held this fledgling in her hand

Like it was more precious than all

The Rocks of time and the world

As a giant holds a seed

Or a mother her child

That they know will grow into a flower

Then upon a rock she placed it

Ticking, for the seconds of its life

And let the fairy nymphs of the river

Have its body

Path building or making ends meet

Here we are all sat down

Amongst the turf that’s turning brown

By the stream which fecund flows

Over rocks in rows and rows

Here we stand beside each other

Sister to sister and brother to brother

Beside the mountain

Beneath the cloud

The echoing falls which talk so loud

A new line

 Monads, epistles, fevers, colds

Cool drooling mouths

Faces of fools opening, closing

Laughing and falling

Like all of human nature

Into the gene pools

The River out of Eden

The long charade

The pictures and shadow play

The aching archipelagos

Abandoned island rock

Out on a precipice

On its own a ticking clock

Giant’s Table

 The Rocks have splodges, splotches of black

Moss spotted, lichen baked, the microbe rack

Faces that were once cracked

By the ice and snow

A shattered crown, a humpty dumpty

A Jack on a hill with a crow

And a crowing goes Jack now

His pock-a-dot tied up in a sack

A stick on his shoulder

A whistle on his lips

Hip-hopping over boulder

Tip-toe topping down dips

A slipping on wet stones

The rushing galling river glen

The flushing archipelagos

Of Moss, liverwort and lichen

The saxifrage in Saxon tongues

Lolling, lapping at the fringes

Watercourses bleeding through the rock

 

Water falling in dark singes

The high table land set in cloud shadows

Laid for a feast of the giant of the mountain

Yet his guest never comes

Never treads foot on steep path

Nor tows his flag pole up

Nor visits with his laugh

 

This cold place of Ghosts and stages

Actors rehearsing dead plays

Poets reading from never seen before pages

All is secrets up in this plot

All is hand tied

Mouths closed

You get what you’re given

And you’re not given a lot

 

These are the days on the thunder mountain

Where the crags are the stalls

And they echo their applause

In claps and snaps

And cracks in the atmosphere

In the buzz of the dead listening skies

In the hearts that crack and break up there

On the mountainside of the mountain lair

Highlands in the Heart

My heart is in the highlands

The lowlands are gone

My mind is making no bones about it

If my love will not wait

Then I’ll not hesitate

And follow the three kings

Who do not doubt it – do no wrong

Come kisses and runes

Remember your tunes

That play as the bag pipes on stages

And the Loch is not forgotten

By the songs they have begotten

As by Pan who listens throughout the ages

Oh four is the number and the number is six

Who must remember to dance at the jigs

And follow the Pages

Who dance like the sages

And beckon on old ancestor wigs

The caber is tossed

The rope is tugged

And men will be men

In ghost or as rugged

Their faces show lines

Their fathers once wore

As their bodies old sinews

Strong as lions that roar

The place in Glen

Where these favourite men

Pulled hand over hand

Until they won

Echoed with their Heave Ho

The rope tight like a bow

The line that can never be broken

Back through the mists of time

To the devil’s very own crime

These mountains have echoed to fighting

Cain fought Abel

Joseph did his father

Abraham prepared Isaac for the slaughter

But as you walk up Glen Nevis

And shadows leave the skies

The sun sets all men free

In its lighting

Long time No Sea

The burnished coast

Green as a pea

Hungary boasts

An inland sea

Where the Holy Ghost

Is in no poverty

The manicured devils finger nails

Ripened claws

As the moonlight pales

Walking east from Minehead’s Pier

The glassy sand, the grassy dune

The monthly moon in Luna phase

As a night sky on Holidays

Easter Fete of spraying water

Over the daughter the Mother, the bride

Or father’s pride

By the boy, the man

The man over board

The Buoy out at Sea

Lost asking in return for saving a wilting flower

Can you with a Piros Tojak (red Egg) save me?

Long time no Sea

In Hungary

Landlocked but knows the Loch, the lake

The lace of Gossamer

Webs like a misty white sea

Over fields or meadows

Where the swallows and swifts

Are the fish

The insects the creel

The whales the loafing cows

Treading through the long grass swells

Like monks saying vows

And little gofers like dolphins

Popping up their heads

Sharks like foxes

Sniffing out ways to be fed

The Sea is the land, the land is the sea

Because what we’ve planned

Is what we can be

And what is possible

There’s no impossibility in endless ocean

In rolls of Mountains

In the fractal geometry

The Partial differential equations

Of change time geology

In topography of sky, sea and land

Interchangeable as three dimensions

Of Space or time

Stretched intermingling

Through the human mind

Puffins

Puffins on Sanday

The gulls are gliding

The cormorants plunge

The sea is sliding

And squeezing the sponge

The rocks are like cakes

Absorb and crumble

Soak and bake

In the shores rumble

The cliffs of morn

Are wild and free

With the whiffs of a storm

And the breath of the sea

And the puffins dangle

Ship-worn and mangle

Where the white veins bleed

Unearned sworn in profile

Against the gathering cloud’s mobile

They swarm like bees

Agile turgid, tight of body

Like the fish they eat

Rainbow biters

Crunching the colours of the silver scales

Oh Come

Oh come to Fort William

The town of the fight

Where the timber men are drinking

The black brew through the night

And the factories are frozen

But the tourist bus rolls

Like an unending horizon

Of the carnival of souls

Come to Fort William

A very hard place

That is trapped between a Mountain

And the actions of Grace

Where woman may walk softly

Where a man is in disgrace

Because that is the nature of the whole

Human race

Give over your line drawings

Nothing is sublime

None more so the etchings from an unquiet mind

You poor mawkings

You Maoists of state

Who hunger for your purse strings

To bring up to date

The nurse in the court yard

The prisoner’s dock

The sentence that has thought hard

On the passing of the clock

The rain buffets trees

The rain will not cease

It comes round the lees

And leaves to the east

The tide is a miracle line

That shadow softly treads

The gull which glides has followed its threads

And it falls on the window pane

In tiny necklace beads

Which have clothed the clouds of heaven

Then by a tempest hurled

There is a queen there some place

Who has lost her jewels

Then they adorn the flowers

Hang around necks of cows or mules

The rose is spotted

In its pink promiscuous haze

It overshadows the cow parsley

On the hedge on rainy days

And we all call softly

Come back to life

And the master of death

Stands and sharpens his knife

River Lundy

River Lundy

I miss the Lundy

The river of Lun

I miss the Summer

Funny Honey Bun

I miss the Blue Sky

The Lazy haze

And I miss Lundy and You

Mardi was a fine day

Mecredi too

Jeudi was okay

Vendredi was Blue

Still I miss the Lundy and You

All day I wonder

Oh what can I do?

I walk the dusty streets

Feed animals at the zoo

Each night I see shooting stars

Quite beautiful is true

Yet I may as well live on Mars

For still I miss the Lundy and You

The seals are singing alone in the bay

Sweet gulls are winging above a mermaid serenade

No more Ghosts are appearing

I’m not afraid of the shade

But I still miss one thing or maybe two

I miss the Lundy and You

Love is on the lips

Of lovers who kiss

Black bird is on the Rosehips

But there are still somethings I miss it is true

Yes I miss the Lundy and You

Sermon on the Mount

Up in the mountains

Where the honey runs sweet

The Glen is heather lined like rows of springy seats

Feathers of an Eagle are found on a rocky crag

Pine trees sway in the breeze

As if a billowing flag

Up on the rocky paths of stone

Where the carrion crow hop

And pick apart the rabbit bone

Or a sheep’s eye goes pop

Where the temperature freezes

In the spring breezes

And an April shower shows in snow

That a fool may be locked in an ivory tower

With a Raven or a crow

What do you want to know of Mountains?

And why do you ask?

We stand as old as Moses

Mountain Ash grew his staff

Dwarf willow were is companions

The eye bright shone his way

Tormentil cured his stomach aches

And his food improved by bay

He clambered like a picking monk

Choosing herb and flower

The mountain ringlet butterfly

Bought him rings of flight

Through sun’s power

He danced among the butterwort

And down a cooling den

A mountain buttress had over shadowed

As a church may do a garden

He found between the cloven feature

A wriggling running rill

Giving rise to heath bedstraw, Ladies mantle

Celandine and daffodil

Everlasting were the purple flowers

Geranium in lush tussocks

Damp and wet the spongy peat

Facing out with Carex

These were rain mountains

The sky did shower with her gifts

These were old Gods now forgotten

But for the passing swifts

To these Moses walked in sandals

To these vigils made by Pilgrim candles

From these now we turn our head

As the living do from the dead

And yet these Gods yet survive

Holding Oberon fairy lives

Like Ransomed kings

From Widowed wives

They bleed their suffering waters baptised

From these Gods we draw our Nourishment

 River’s swell and Glen’s green Blandishment

Even now electric bulbs and bells

Are powered by their hydro wells

We call it ‘green’, call it man’s invention

But it is just the Mountain God’s intention

To keep his children well with water

As the fatherland set free the river daughter

And we drink and think with laughter

How well this Mountain does us look after

Facing North

The Cliffs of the Tower ring their bells

With Starwort Saxifrage

And Alpine Speedwells

The walls of the castle are highest with might

And the route by the ledge is demanding of plight

This fortress mountain in a blanket of Snow

Becomes a strange moonscape only intimate confidents know

And flourishing well down to their roots

Are the wood rushes and sedges, grown where the burn fills your boots

Little dwarves, little gems on a Rhinoceros hide

 Like some marvellous adornment to a most ugly bride

Yet the clouds are her veil

And when they sometime move aside

They reveal like a sail

Her soft and delicate side

But, then, her Majesty in Cathedral like organs

Are played by the wind demons

Who move beneath her brogans

These smooth Ballein features

Like slippers worn smooth

That lie like sea creatures

So still that never move

Her buttresses are ear-marked

With climbers rings

Yet even these tracks well harkened

Have not been fully listening

The sheer imagination that gave rise to the plan

Is pure intimation of what He will do, He can

His design shows such majesty it is beyond mortal words

No mind can comprehend though they visit in hoards

Just to be among greatness, to walk on its mile

To feel the rock of ages, cracked in a frozen smile

To let the Mountain know

That it is worshipped in homage

Come wind, rain or snow

They will seek out rare saxifrage

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

Times Of Tumult -Scotand

Steall Falls – July 2015

The livid falls clash

Eking out, bleeding over brims of rocks

Hard bone shoulders

Spraying fountains, broadcast seed

Blooming flowers in white showers screed

Up around a stubborn crag

It almost stops and then turns back

But finds another stairs to descend

A secret passage a making mends

It knits its woven braids of hair

A white mane folding

As from a polar bear

Ferocious, simple, stark and blind

It bungles over time after time

It is a great divider, boundary line

That cold hand of nature

Has clasped its minds

Where water bears its inky soul

Into the well where the white words fall

And are written out

Stretched in lines over

River beds and rocky climbs

They give its voice as children’s laughter

Approaching clatter

Of pounding hooves

White noise chatter incessant