Journey north in a late, late summer;
Try to tell if change in the air
Has seeped into the ground.
Water, buildings, shanty sheds,
Seen from the roadway,
Seem otherwise the same,
Reflecting a slate sky.
Refraction is constant
As the spectrum divides;
Time has raised more grass,
Still green, still growing.
A rail bridge lifts the road
Over lines and embankments;
Beyond the tree-edge fields
Sheep stand under skies leaden with birds.
Geese fly south, like arrows pointing,
Towards whatever passes for home
Or better days for geese.
Fleeting, left-behind villages
Huddle for reassurance
Under tiles and auburn spires.
As if, beneath the migrant flocks,
A stone-built home is the safer choice;
As if what has always been safe,
Cottar and kirk, manse and mansion,
Should remain behind unchanged.
So the northern road
Across the land runs or winds
Between fields of stubble-rolled silage.
Mountains mark distance.
Rivers flow out of them
And turn under bridges
Like quiet afterthoughts.
On the moving line
Where hill and cloud rub together
Something deeper than weather
Stirs the scenic passage of travel
Runs before it, brings down change
In climate, of mind, warming it
Making it volatile.
Now land lies solid under sun
Copse and thicket prepare to shed leaves,
Harvest nearly gathered,
Cattle wandering back to their byres,
Sheep in single file across the slopes.
Hearts of beast, hearts of people
Beat faster now the light is going.
Fate can be felt in the fingers,
In the tingling of the palms.
A winter mood is coming,
Grim and determined,
With the low sun’s slanting light.
Change is coming with it
Already locked in the fallen rain
Or in later snow in drifted fields
Until the flood the thaw makes
Rushes over us all like hope.
The hills are nearer now
And with them farm-touns
Strung-out villages
Backwaters of little moment
Chapels and homes,
Fallow parks between.
Some say such places show
How small, untouched,
How destitute we are,
Too useless to hope at all
Or make anything of anything.
But make of it a kirk to heaven
Or a byre for sharn or work;
However great or small,
It’s ours to make.
© BH 2015
It was a year on from the Independence Referendum. Autumn was fading out and the way seemed as long as ever. I was going north by road. Same land, same buildings: several hours of scenery I’d seen from every angle before. What had changed. The mood was still there. I wrote this trying to come to grips with it.
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