Shieling

West wind comes like a ghost,
Summer a mere presence.
Winding roads fade into the hillsides
Where, barefoot, we wander,
Turn skyward, skip the burns,
Scatter in the yellow of the glen,
Lie forgetful in grass-grown hollows.

High slopes, green with joy,
Herald days as broad as time itself.
Herd and flock in pasture
Reap each moment
From the whispering ground.

Stone walls and heather thatch
Shelter the night from our short sleeping
Cover the bed of our bones
With a veil as thick as the stars.

Under the round dome of heaven,
Round as the half-remembered night,
Arching like cathedral beams
Over the length of days, unspoken days
Where the beasts forget winter
For the sun–sharp grass.

Stick-thin children
Laugh, running over the burn-stones,
Leaping the heather stalks,
Jinking in bracken-dark woods
Letting pine and rowan shade them
Till evening only half descends
Till father or uncle brings them to sleep
Or mothers leave cattle and lamb
To hold them until dream-fall
And the long slide to morning.

There is no end to such a day
To such a season
The rightness of light
Blue under unassuming cloud.
Where the winds come gentle
And the rain like a teardrop in the dusk
Brushes dust away,
Eases the brow to sleep.

Shieling, a place where time
Runs like a mist in the grazings
Where souls like birds soaring
Touch something as close to heaven
As makes no mind.

Hearts among the stones
Beat like the slow pulse of passing days
Life seeps into the earth
And the mudstone streams
Where it remains an indelible memory
Even when the heavy autumn
Scars the parks and drowns summer
In its coming.

© BH 2013

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Sudden rush of brains to the heid. Written for the Land Marks project in Glenbuchat, just a thought. Gill Russell and Isobel Gilchrist are working on an installation of the same name.

Take a look on the Land Marks website or find Land Marks on Facebook.

Here's the text on an image. I have to admit it's way up the Findhorn at Streens, across the river from Quilichan.