CARRADALE BAY, KINTYRE
Caradale rocks’
north-east leaning
thrust up
of wavy laminae
form along lateral corrugations
green tones on grey
from moss and lichen fossilised
they’ve made
permanent
motion direction and shape
of lava tide and wind
from ancient flow wash and blow
single helices stupefy the
eye
on geologic formation
dimension is reduced to
two
perspective lost
like seeing Monet across Bridget Reilly
until a solitary eye focusses
in persistence onto a truncation
an edge whose spiral re-engages
extension and depth of space
a Cezanne effect
restoring keener seeing
at once giving in alternate exchange
of clarity and distortion
learning that the eye
is the resolver
RÙM RETURN
1.
sailing
the Rùm boat
curving ‘round Eigg
sea turning black
as have the clouds
as Rùm looms
in his special gloom
2. arrival
on Kinloch
Beach
a heron and curlew
feeding on the sand and shale
at the out-tide
3. the departure within
cloud curls over the
Rùm Cuillin
as if to veil something secret or forbidding
but it’s just a sacredness
that seeks to be experienced
through the cloud
in the rain
everywhere
green but the gabbro sandstone
and lava
mottled white and ochre with lichen
always sound
wind that speaks through branches and
leaves
rivers rushing
never far the murmur of a waterfall
channelling the nearly-always falling rain
west along Glen Kinloch
and north a little from the crossroad
where westward again
track becomes path through Glen Shellesder
blanket bog to the west coast
Sgaorishal and Minishal portals at the entrance
4. west coast
everything with a surface is green
even the sea stacks are thatched in grass
hooded crows
shags
oystercatchers
and the ubiquitous gull occupy this coastline
a herd of
deer
its stags proudly declare their dominion
as monarchs of the glen
Canna and Sanday close by across the Sound
of Canna
the faint hump of Barra way out west in the Sea
of the
Hebrides
a deer calf carcass
hollowed out spine to ribs
picked clean by crows
after the cloud lift
Orval and Bloodstone Hill still wisped in mist
despite the brightening elsewhere
washed
ashore a dayglow orange buoy reads
‘JOY’
but Rùm shows no emotion
he’s older than emotion
a strange incongruity
Guirdil to Kilmory Bay
bearing east over the Monadh Dubh
the Black Moor
a geological quadrant
that bumps up and gorges sedimentaries out
into the sound of Canna
in between the Long Loch and Main Ring
faults
to the south and east
no path but an incipient one
worked by like-farers
Skye fills out the north
Cuillin spurs filed behind one another under
giant corries
stacks
extend and slope cracked red
Torridonian sandstone
as if slipping away from their own mass
into the sea
a nameless stack appears to
be in motion
by its worn-out geology rumbling as it crumbles
away
(like a George Braque composition
and Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Nu descendant
un escalier’)
everything
suggests a name
down to Kilmory Bay
a raised beach
and two-tone sand
beige and white in between break the blue and
green
pungent smell of cervine urine
grid north Skye Cuillin impact the skyline
across an unnamed sound in between
Rùm’s north
and Minginish
I’ve come to the edge of an island
wilderness
a wilderness circumscribed by itself
the Sea of the Hebrides
Sounds of Canna and Rùm
myself the only human among
the gulls and
guillemots
oystercatchers and deer
bathing in
the warm shallows of the North
Atlantic Drift
I feel the universe experience itself through me
in this interaction of space and time and body
and mind
that carries a consciousness knowing that
somehow
it needs me here now to Be As It Is
fulfilling the Destiny of Pure Being
within three dimensions
a sense of unto itselfness on this island
you are on its terms
having made its own unique ecology
hyper oceanic rock-topped bog
5. the arrival within
to the end
of the Kilmory Glen where the
tracks cross
again
I head east back along Kinloch Glen
curve around Loch Scresort
on the south side of Kinloch Bay
where the triple peaks of Skye’s Beinn na
Caillich
past the lips of the bay at Rubha na Roinne
fill out an illusion of two beautiful breasts
spread apart by lazy cleavage
ah the feminine!
Rùm’s had me in
the head
Gaia’s masculine
fathering thought and poetry
6. departure
on the old Kinloch pier
looking over the bay
meditation on a heron fishing
slow cool elegant
and by my passive interaction
in that same instant
I become the same
and emulate this bond
as I stroll nonchalantly
with every intention
of catching my ferry
7.
sailing away
Glancing back from the stern
distance reveals the full scale of the bulk you
compact
and height you reach from such a small body
rising straight up out of the sea
under over and to either side
of a clear blue frame of sea and sky
arrival in grey and black
departure in green and blue
the weather your maker
my deceiver
THE
DECLARATION OF ARISAIG
at Arisaig a koan comes to mind
“what was your face
before the birth of your parents?”
Arisaig
a place where south Morar flattens down
bumps up and down around the sheltered bay of
Loch nan
Ceall
old oak silver birch beech and scots pine
on the verdant Strath of Arisaig
that shares the head of the loch with mudflat
and rock
and the view over and out to Eigg’s
ancient geology
where in north it downs sharp and curls to soft
curve
into the Sound of Sleat
at south Sgurr of Eigg - Sphinx-like head of
pitchstone
lava
risen to command a bold face to Ardnamurchan
and the
southern Hebrides
and plummet sheer into slow and gentle gradual
descent
seaward into her own Sound
my face was
a bed of running lava burning
you into you
my face was a wind weathering
my face was the waves that smoothed you over
my face was the roots that buried into gripped
and grew
out of you
and today an old traveller in time
corporeally passing through
together with all in countenance around
telling in our own tongue
our tales of yesterday
VEHICLES
this night
is a portal
into oneness
the poem
a traveller
farther and wider
across the threshold
of all possibility
LOCH GOIL, JULY
over the
mountaintops
gannets thin in the air
green undersky revolves
around grey loch
springy tussocks backshore
wet wood bog above
sinking soft
head light
no thoughts
an overtaken feeling
of I don’t know what
and let it be
HELIOL
it’s late January
and the feel of a spring day
warm sun permeating
blades shoots leaves
penetrating soil
brightening everywhere
moving out
leaving by
freshness and release
letting go
letting be
in peace-love-joy
going on
connecting back
lining up ahead
woven to present
letting
letting be
letting the light
come
through
clarity
magnitude
levity
right-amplitude
fine calibration
thousand breaking scintillae
dissolving by the power
of their own lucency
light-borne
moved along
heliol
transparent
timeless in thin air
NEAR ABERFOYLE
through the Forth oaks
on rise dip and bends
saturation on Doon Hill
nothing to think
nothing to say
no poetry to write
who am I here?
Times
(Colonsay to Oransay)
new moon
spring tide
crossing strait
to other shore
quarter moon
neap tide
no crossing
to other shore
full moon
spring tide
crossing strait
to other shore
gibbous moon
neap tide
no crossing
to other shore
time to cross
time to stay
crossing
and not crossing
is where it’s at
the other shore
is the other shore
to the other shore
KINTRYE MONDO
nameless place
behind this Kintyre beach
pronounce yourself through
across wind and rock and sea
and this me standing here
a silent feeling
felt presence within
LABURNUM FLOWER
lush pendulous relaxed
in summer yoga
emulating
I bend myself head first
arching over into uttanasana
hands dangling to ground
and learn to know
the secret
of the yellow cluster
under branch
over earth
and the work
of a strong system
of roots
and steady trunk
to yield so light
so still
a suspended drop
in mid air
LEWISIAN RITE
at the Butt of Lewis
as far away as you can get
from anywhere
in the British Isles
a land on the sharp edge
of perpendicular drop
smooth clifftops roll grass over
sheer vertiginous gneiss
no slopes
letting you down gently
the eye negotiates
down-up
down-up
dizzy head
steady feet
at this land’s end
an end
of the Earth
geologic harmonics
in the form of stacks
disjunct a few feet out
from the sea
all out to Americas
Scandinavia
Atlantic chasm
but more like part of something else
place of the lone mind
home in its freest essence
a void
devoid of everything else in the way
where mind can right itself
think straight long and clear
and write itself in truest essence
a voice in the void
after the voices of raven and gannet have
sounded
brings you up
through the boy of your heart
what make ye
man o’ the world’s edge
is it time to leave the shore
and fly out
off your toehold of Lewis?
a backglance to the
Sutherland skyline
across The Minch
a Manhattan of mountains
strong broad foothold of a place
gone
I’m on the edge of
pure ether
stations above the ocean
LOMOND SURFACE
rain pitting loch
a dark grey pointillism
shades paler calm surface
symmetrical with the cloud in the sky
this is nothing other
that a little distinction
within the indistinct
ELUSIVE
poetry
I sometimes wonder
where you are
and the minute I do
you sneak up the back of me
and pounce
POETRY
I am in
I am out
I am over
under
through
I am
free to come
and go
beyond if I want
over the edge if I feel
I am a Fool
of no certain design
I am Divine actually
and it is best to take me
with a pinch of salt
until you are as I am
WORDING
interior
candleshine
on autumn leaves
speckling lattice window
that’s now
a long still now
and changing
staying with it
catching the changes
(the poem is just the thing
that helps you stay
and catch)
an opening
to the world
THE BLANK PAGE 1
the blank page
is the nothing
before the something
the thing at
rest
which we don’t have to worry about
The blank page is peace itself
one must write much
or little
to restore that peace
or create another
inspired by its emptiness
THE BLANK PAGE 2
off
off the page
well off
off and far
or not so far
other than the image of its emptiness
(which is something to celebrate)
the words are in the wind
and whispering fast
so you have to listen
still and chase
ah!
listen to the page with no words
listen to the page with no words
feel the silence
hear the wind
GIGHA OUTLOOK
Islay-Jura
two
blended by weather
parallax
and the eye
in this realm of appearances
a long lean flank
of tan and charcoal
Jura slides down
avant Islay
who hides behind
her Sound
cumulus bank sits on the Paps
an isolative puff above
the eastern heights beside Beinn Bheiger
drift together and stay there
in formation
or do they move north a little
an imperceptible little?
ten minutes of time answers the eye
missing the changes
and I ask
how could I be
knowing
in micro-measurements of movement?
perfection of stillness
long rise of geologic rest
under flocculent peace
within sea slow to shore
THREE AS THE WIND COMES UP THE SOUND OF GIGHA
1
full force
the wind
adjusts
corrects
balances
poise
underfoot
over mind
over self
to no mind
no self
standing
on a blasted beach
2
behind the wind
in a place of no weather
there
unconcealed
where it is
but hidden
by veils
of our own making
and perpetuation
like the cloud
obscuring Jura
lifting
as I write poetry
3
transmigration of consciousness
upon the wind
skin to Soul
touches
making manifest
invisibles
disclosing
declaring
the nature
of Being through
and to and from
skin to Soul
Soul to skin
upon the wind
AT LUSS
a body
I walk into the mist
through grey
over loch
suffused in indistinction
neither a body
a clear space
nor liquid pool
nothing like it was
before the indistinct
and in the indistinct
it becomes clear
how I am
how it is
the cover lightens
outlines reform themselves
and moving out
whence I stand
it becomes clear
that I AM
that IT IS SO
distinct
WHITE RITE
relentless annihilating white
necessary and welcome
on the upward and onward
no real place
nor state
but symbol of both
where personality and ego
complete separation
from the four human bodies