ardnamurchan

a crater rim 

on an ocean’s point
in a circle of land’s dead bones

islands rise
reminders in stone
of everything that went before

here was an end of water
a line of shore
cliff edges

and flanked hills bending
subdued by skies

we gave our life
to these outcrops
even then

and inside
our meagre walls
we waited for the seasons
to favour us with light

for the storm squalls’ wild wind
to pass over and leave us
one more green tomorrow

our clachans and bothans
were crumbling ruins
from the beginning

but our husbandry
was solid in the land
with dried wrack’s brittleness

persisting
beyond each day’s end
for every shallow day remaining

© BH, 2020

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Visited for my birthday this year. A long hoped for exploration of an evocative place. Everything in it to be savoured: the narrow single-track roads, the most westerly lighthouse in the country (I grew up near the most easterly), the beaches, the ancient crater left by three magma chambers, the antiquities, the cleared villages…

The sun shone on us and on the islands beyond the shore. A kind of magic.