Clouds

Clouds

Clouds are pilgrims ever travelling

Round the winding world unravelling

Tying up and letting go

As the spool while the seamstresses sew

And their thread

Is the winding wind

Which blows this way

Then back again

And the clouds are like carrier freight

With their cargo of water

They cannot be late

‘Always hurrying to the next mountain

Like ghosts who cannot rest

Who must keep going as if un-blest

And yet some holy pilgrimage

Keeps them travelling on

As if they knew that somehow

Their time shall not be long

Ghost Town

Ghost Town

This town, this town

Like a carousel turns around

Faces in the circus

Each a kind of clown

Painted skin and staircases

Draped in Adam’s Ale

All will turn to Ice Castles

Come the Wind and Hail

Fortress, stronghold, bearer of the monk

Shed loads of lotteries

Every Murder investigation sunk

All because you don’t belong

They say under hushed tones

Concealing garments of Arab beans

Around necklaces of crushed bones

All escalators jar on the snow peppered Mountain tops

They heave their sighs

In heave hoes

Between the goes

And stops

Even the Avalanche will eventually lose control

And then all the helpless victims

Will be released from frozen snow

Here is where the clock ticks

But nobody counts the days

Each are blended today in tomorrow

As billiards knock, kick and part in sorrow

This Haunted place of Ghosts

No wonder Clansmen die

From the painted Motherwell

To the long lost spear of Mackie

Shaken are the frigid hands

That turn to write the page

All are white who can call fright

Back to the Scottish Stage

Macbeth is in is Torpor

The Lady runs blood down the drain

The Wind windmills the wheelie Bins

And it never ceases to rain

The figures in this Chrysalis

The Winter Queen has stilled

Are as the knaves whom at Fairies hands

Will find their life bloods chilled

Some say ghosts are breeding

Some say darkness walks

Hand in hand with feeding

As the Stag’s Head talks

Too many deaths have bleached the ground

Too much blood has soaked its moss

And in these Clan destined days

The wedding sounds drowned out

By the voices of loss

Who here was a Cameron?

Who there a Jacobite who rose?

Who Frames the accursed James

Now lays himself where the thistle grows

Fort William, this town, Onich and Corpach

Bring out your dead

Lay out their bodies

But their souls to here come back

Give them six feet to lay in

Give them a horse’s span

Leave them hands to hold them

They will hold them if they can

Each a living member

Each a tie to Earth

The Mountain Glen

Does remember what its men

In death are truly worth

Living life must cling here

Enter and hang in the air

Each torpid wind-blown vapour

Remembers each wisp of hair

Heavy is the fog now

Heavy on the Pine

Heavy the heave ho, the tug-o-war

And heavy on the Mountain line

Train tracks through the hollow

Deer tracks on the snow

Under the earthen grave so shallow

In the rivers wake they tow

Remember this Fort’s fighting

Remember Romans, English, Danes and Picts

Celts fought in the Mountain Belts

All fought over land

With hands or sticks

Remember said the Winter King

To the Summer Wren

The Season’s change,

But, I remain

Ruler over Men

The Robin flies off from the Holly

The boys beat the bounds sounding jolly

And Winter skins the leafless trees

As the lone figure stands in the folly

Remember when,

The voices ken,

Resound, resound

Within the Glen

Remember me when the Ghosts are Gone

From this Ghost Town

Fort William

Red Sky

Red Sky At Night

The village stood as if damned

Corrosive in illusions of the mind

A water boy was running

To fetch the fire brigade

And the torpedo manufacturer

Had corked his finest wine

A magical dragon

Then curtailed the wagon

And bit off one of its wheels

Gosh Golly said the madam

Drinking from a flagon

That warehouse is making eyes at me

Well how does it make you feel?

To know an empty field

Said the farmer

In his hand was a potato peel

The last crop of last year

Since war with Mars

All our spuds have been nicked

Yet I chased a Martian with a Spatula

And it felt quite spectacular

To know that  a fly on Mars

Can flatten me

You don’t drive your car on Mars?

Said the lollipop lady

Who had filled her mouth with Candy

From all the helpless babies

She helped to cross the road

You must be crazy

Said the Martian

We all hover on Space beams

And gravity don’t pull you down so hard

He ain’t Heavy, man the life buoy

He’s floating away

Oh Brother why did you have to go and live on Mars?

My brother he was happy

Wearing the Martian Hood

He felt Einstein was the only one

Who truly understood

But the Milky way was curdling

And his journey would be long

Jet set let’s go

Now I’m going to where I must belong

The rocket ship fired

Its engines burst into flames

The little skid mark from tyres

Left single tracks across our brains

And in a gush of gasoline

And a whoosh of rocket fuel

This ship crossed the boundary line

Of the imagination and what’s possible

Out beyond the stars

Above a barren sands

To another Red Rocky plane

To be caught in Martian hands

Like a paper aeroplane

Sent across a class in school

Its message met the Martian eyes

As if a guided cotton spool

The thread as in the labyrinths

In jet trails out to Space

Yet in their air, it was so vacant

The origin difficult to trace

The burning ship set down

Its fires quenched by the Red sand

Like blood the red horizon foretold delight

At shepherds hands

But Martian sheep can bound for miles

And a shepherd here must have a sense of humour

The only time he’s without his smiles

Is when he sees a Martian Puma

They prey upon his flock of sheep made

In part of aluminium

And sink their tin opening mouths

That shine in some illumine

These chases take place soon after dark

While the tin sheep start to rust

And by the morning they’ve shed themselves

Of a hundred fillings of red dust

The Zinc/Magnesium clad Pumas agitate

And set themselves in bold

Shining like a fire

In the starry Martian cold

It all seems like a miracle

It all seems so well planned

But the shepherd he rises on a spiracle

Of unearthly breath he has manned

For no man ever went there

None who from earth were born

None before my brother Peter

Who rode in on a cob of blazing corn

He landed and a maze field, began springing into life

All the Martian cried that’s amazing

No more worries or agricultural strife

We can all give up steel sheep grazing

And opt for an easier life

So glad were they he came there

They called him star man from the East

For with him Sunlight, blue skies and rain

Which drove out the wild Red beast

The Red dust which fed him had fallen from grazing sheep

And now without red rust it led him

To retreat into the planet’s deep

Out went the warders and keepers of the Red

Out the damn spot back to its hole

Now they’re all living underground

Now the Martian’s can have a soul

On went the planting of the corn and the wheat
New grew the bread and the patter of green feet

The Green giants stood at eight feet tall
Every earthman was a midget 
To these men of the Red Ball
But the Red dust had not gone away
It was hidden in the basement
And buried in the hay
Waitin for the right time
When night replaced the day

Then at that moment when night broke out instead
The Red Martian's came out their holes
And began killing the Green ones dead 
To and fro they wrestled for what seemed fifty years
Until a final truce was settled
Which left the Green ones quite in tears

The Greens would be left in peace
If they helped the Red Barons with a War
They wanted their dogs of war unleashed 

Upon the hated earth they swore

For an Earthling had come some years ago
And changed the fine balance of power
The Reds had lost face that day when to their holes they'd cowered

The Reds would stand no more for earth
With Its lights of leading minds
They wanted to extinguish all its candles
Bring back the dark times

The Green Martians disagreed
But what else could they do?
If they didn't want more bloodshed

They knew they must subdue

And so a pact was made to ally against the Earth
The Red blood was mixed with Green in Oath
And each knew what blood was worth

The Invasion came one Wednesday
Following a Blood Red Dawn

The people of Earth felt hazy
As if tired of just being born

And if this was to be the World's end
Then what an end it would be
While the Martians rode in on Fountain Pens
And scribbled on the Sky
We are Free

So as I say
There came a day
When Mars did Earth Invade
And after much bloodshed
Both red and green of Martian Vein
And Earth's blood that was red
The Earthlings realised a thing
Like knowledge from a dream
That it was the red not the green
Who did the War-waging
Though it cost the Greens their souls

And the Great minds on Earth perceived
That when the first earthling who was on Mars received
The place was a desert made of Red
From the rusty sheep
And they saw if only stainless steel sheep
Could be persuaded to live there instead
The Red dust would be gone
Just as a Body which is dead
Decays to dust and bone
Nothing else could be left
To the Red Army which they might call home

So the plan became to drop
These steel wool parachutes
As if a ticking hand grenade
In that when they moult
As will a sheep
Only stainless steel wool would be laid
And the Red Planet who wages war
Would instead become a silver ball
A harmless brother to the moon

A crack team of Shepherds set out
Into the Red of Night
And dropped their ticking bombs of wool
Under wooly cover out of sight
The next months proved decisive
As the New Martian sheep did Moult
It left no rust for Red dust to mine
Like it grinds the pepper and salt
The Reds soon had no choice
but to retreat to underground
And even now you can hear the faint voice
Of the Red Dust drilling sound

But so long as Green is Green
And the stainless steel sheep do munch the pasture
The Red dust will settle out of scene
The Greens will still be master

So don't think the Grass is always Greener
On the other side of the road
Just think of this tale when you see a Red Sky at Night
And be Glad the Earth is your abode



  

Ben Nevis

Sitting on the over ground

Under ground flows over rock

The voice from under is a trickle a babble

Of life where for it to be found

Is like a shock

Old familiar burn is friend to traveller of weary feet

Once you’ve climbed to mountain peak

It serves you a cool refreshment stop

Red burn flowing from a thousand fathoms deep

Who knows where it comes from?

How or why the Red Giant sleeps

Like a Lazy reptile

Its fish flesh rests

Easing in the water

Sliding smooth granite slab over slab

Like intercostals of its heaving rib cage

Breathing algae and moss

Wet lichen sponges, the ages that pass

And then the Red Giant shifts

Raises his leviathan bulk

Skip sized boulders

Roll off his great shoulders

And then he settles again

And the Red Burn off his orange, silver grey body

Rolls as if his blood

But though his bones creak

He still lives under rain flood

Or baking blue skies

Heights

Up high it is grey cold stone

A graveyard of broken tombs

Fallen base of sky

The barren boulder field

Crumbled moon rock pie

Adamantine Hardness of earth

Protrusion reaching so far up

One of Mother Nature’s most promising children

Turned to stone by an angry God

What did it do to warrant such a punishment?

Did it like the Titans of old try to reclaim Eden?

Made themselves Lord and Master of all they survey

But oh what disaster ahead of them lay

They boiled in righteous indignation, in their own impotency did rage

Their molten vibrancy of action lay like monuments that last an age

Their only crime self realisation that in God’s image were they made

And yet in this pride was their downfall from their Mighty Stage

National Poetry Day theme - Light

Sunlight Time

The Sunlight drifts down like a yellow foggy dust

It makes the trees immediate in their surrounding

It makes the “now” the cliffs

The clarity of water

Being is under its skin

Un-being is behind in the depths, the past

This land has all memory in the dark

None in the light

It is new under the Sun

It can be new for us too

If only thinking did not make it old

Known and familiar

If only knowledge had not cast its shadow over our minds

Our Nature

Before the beginning was the Word

The Word was in darkness

But Adam was in lightness

We need new eyes to look

At the world in the light it was made to be seen in

Hands at Work

Scrape on the river bed

Raise the rocks like you raise the dead

Pick the ground with the axe find the hole

Take out its claws

Clip Devils toenails, shells and barnacles

 Imbue with life ammonites and Brachiopods

Bring them back out of the dark

Lying there mud-bound for millennia quite happily

Read the lie of the land

This slope that dip

Roll up the rocks lift

With your hand

Dig up the turf,

Throw it down

Bore into the bank like a thief for the sand

Use the spade to cut out cubes of stringy

Rooty sodden peat, that is so water logged

You can hardly lift it

Precious, so precious this harboured flesh

Like a surgeon cutting out the Fat of the Land

It takes grit, it takes belief to make a path

A determination to reclaim that little piece of wild

The Path through the Pines

Pine wood pale against brown bark

Wooded blatant without a spark

Dull, latent furry animal warm

Yet like the scales of a reptile

Unmistakably firm

Acidic, acrid needles that hurt

A floor of compass pins

Lost in a haystack

Thorns pin-dropping in the dark

Wait listen and hear the wind

Through them stir

That chandelier rustle

Of glass blades chill shattering

As wraiths in the firs

Wet and waiting soldiers of Mur

Waiting to be roused by one of the three kings

The father leylandii bristling their beards

Then the spirit returns

In convection raising moss and fungal spores in religious

Direction

Until intoxicated the whole Pine forest stirs to listen

The glass wood splits, leaf pins shimmer and shiver their timbers

The holy Ghost of the hill side has breathed

And her sigh is felt overhead

As a guide to the spirit world and the lost traveller

Taking the path through the wood

Lost in translation – the Scottish accent

We broke 900 lights last night

We broke 900 lights

Next month we hope to break the one thousand mark

She said with some pride

I was abhorred – you mean you smashed them all of them?

On your own?

She looked at me quite dazzled

Said “it is as if you are an alien”

I said ‘light bulbs?’ still disbelieving

She said one word “Facebook”

And then, because I still wasn’t getting it - she reiterated more clearly

“I said Likes!”

Cow Hill

The cow jumped over the moon mama

The cow jumped over the moon

I saw it there where the scare crows stare

And the lovers in arms do croon

Upon Cow Hill my dear

The frogs are leaping and the moon is clear

But the heavy heifers are lowing

Their orange manes are blowing

But no cows jump over the moon.

But I swear, I swear mama, mama

That I saw it all the same

What you saw were the Cows on their way back Home

Down the track from where they came

Cow Hill Surrealists

Yeast on risen hills

Wind blown

To unleavened valley floors

The rock cakes, moon rock, bakes

The hot-hearted peoples

Maroon and move

In battle with cattle

They lock horns

Of the army of moos

Down on cow hill

Factories of Aluminium Shields resound in chants

Rio-tinto, Rio-tinto in tribal tones

And tin soldier, drummer boys

Who plough fertile moon fields

That lay in conspicuous towering caravans

And lessen the lassoes from

The wild musket rams

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