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
