fall

scour

from 'Hózhó'

Heavy sea running

14/3/95

dusted snow

below the forest edge
and nowhere else

windlass

soun o sleat

Syne the meen

Surfaces

Layered and level, 

landscape waits for sky…

            …to wash the angled trees with wind or light,
            …to wash the upturned leaves.

ardnamurchan

a crater rim 

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

only roads and rails

and there were only 

roads and rails
a crossroads
beneath a horizon
a dangerous sky
where trees overshadowed
distance
and clouds
in a smoking heaven

almost gothic

seaward dusk

a woman
hair spun black
as midnight

chamaenerion

fenced
plantation woods
bracken banks and
chamaenerion
rising into
summer

Plinth

Yes, I remember Grantham—
The name and the association—
Because one day in the autumn
Of a year, my train connected.

Shunted on some railway triangle
This way, that way, forwards and back,
Till I ran across bridges to travel
North away from Thatcher’s England.

between

in an arc of light
a segment
heaven meets the sea

sea washes
the feet of continents
and narrow human ground

and in the space
between heaven and earth
the emptiness of air

reflects blue above
and the blue of ocean
the colour of weather

while everything alive
circles in the curved
brushstroke of creation

© BH, 2018

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Alison Dunlop posted her latest large-form watercolour between heaven and earth (on TH Saunders Waterford Series archival cotton paper, 101 X 153 cm) destined for the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour Open, in Edinburgh (in November 2018).

As ever, it captures the sea and island-scapes of the Minch and the Inner Sound between Skye and the mainland.

I had to make a short poem on it…See Alison's website for more… The RSW is here…

Solstice

Summer came in
From the islands.

After rain or storm
A cold wind blew
From the south.

The Wind as it Blew

the wind as it blew was an ill wind
the near hills no longer gentle
rode hard against the sky

the sea as it ran in cross-currents
was a rip-tide off Bhatasgeir
drowning those who stayed

‘Ah, Dhòmhnaill, when will another son of yours be lost
parted from Aird Thunga and the flat rocks above the shore?’

Yellow Light

Drab sunsets with rain drawn through;
cold cloud in the west thickening the air;
opaque and tobacco-hazed, reluctant light.

Yellow flowers of field and heath:
buttercup, dandelion, tormentil, asphodel;
leaves, falling and fallen, birch and alder;
sedge grass at this year’s end.

Fool’s Gold

The river descending cast water over stones
And the brown-rust lightness of its ripples
Moved against the flow in the sun’s light.

Down in the gravel beds the poor fools panned
Among the grains for the smallest metal,
For precious cargo in the eroded world.

Lament

Oh, Sunrise,
You beaches,
It is no favour I ask.
Will you come again?
Oh, Beaches,
You sand-grains,
Speck of red, oh rising sun.