chamaenerion

fenced
plantation woods
bracken banks and
chamaenerion
rising into
summer

distanced
a farmhouse
Scots vernacular
a rough track winding
through its pines
birches among rubble
where its road was cut

seedling trees
drainage channels
through scree
and heather

sheep paths
winding scars
among the boulders

naked mountains
round-topped
patchworked with
muirburn and soil creep
outcrop after outcrop
old strata shaping
assiduous flocks
grazing the distance

pylons march
gunmen of the Old West
contesting aimless honour
triple-armed, weapon-less,
ready to draw fire
wires like trajectories

heights cut with corries
eroding rain’s persistence
water-worn glens
in embryo

roadway verges
snow-slat barriers
defending traffic-flow
against climate

rivers rub out
curved ground
my understanding
another sediment
my thinking turns
to stone

© BH, 2019

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Still on the bus to a reading in Glasgow, I scribbled a landscape from the passing world. Chamaenerion is the generic name for Rosebay Willowherb or Fireweed. Changed from Epilobium sometime, I suppose…  The full name is now Chamaenerion angustifolium and, as ever, is still disputed on the basis of an 1818 naming which made it Chamerion. This has, according to Wikipedia, been superceded. 

The things you have to sort out after a simple bus journey…