Horizon

An edge of memory
Like a mountain in the distance
Separates heaven and earth.

My eye, the one unblinking
Behind sinew, nerve and blood,
The camera eye I see the world in,
Scans the landscape.

I have a place in mind:
A rock, a seashore and an ocean
Of waves to a shore in the small distance.

The broad sea-loch is rimmed
By sand-shallows and inlets
Where tiny islands and channels
Guide the tide-run
And the swell rises in uneven lines
From open sea to sullen beach.

The broken line of stones at my feet
And the heavy, weed-laden water’s rise and fall
Begins in silence.
The wide grey-flecked sea beyond
Breaks on the far shore
White with the end of waves
Scattering on the beach.

Into the low brown hills’ rising
Strips of green, grass-grown hollows,
Croft ground, lazy beds and houses,
Small white dwellings, old and new,
A scattering of stonework on the slopes
Petering out as heather claims the heights.

So many horizons: divisions
Across planes of seeing.
At last, above the near and distant shores,
Above the patternless, strung-out townships
The earth gives up its edge to sky.

© BH 2014

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This is another piece I wrote after hearing interviewers on BBC's Radio 4 talking to musicians and composers about creating pieces in response to horizons or skylines. If you think about it, this is somewhere west of here.