Azimuth

Every landscape in its frame,
A moment-by-moment composition,
Textured life scratched on ground,
The green field, the birch-wood going upwards,
The tree-starved, muir-burned hills.

Light falls from another place
and runs like water from a clear sky.

The heat-haze modulates it;
The sky defines the shape of a mountain,
The shape of a steep glen’s cliffs
The disappearing river passing between
Carrying today’s light to the sea.

Scudding clouds trail the smallest wisps,
Remnants of sea-haar brought on the wind
From the far coast.

The heat of the day is unbending.

Overloooking the river,
From a high place, the trail stumbles
Along the line of the red craig
Above Quilichan and Ballaggan
Below the cliff-bank horizon
And the steep hills’  horizon
To the place where the inevitable sky
Meets land in the long walk
Of our imagination.

 © BH 2014

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This is the third 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. The image on this page is Quilichan, a long walk up river from here. The Red Craig and Ballaggan are real too.