Voices are rising from
the river, murmurings
and whispers, myths
and stories gather pace
among the rounded,
silky smooth stones
like shoals of
migrating fish spawning
tales and songs.
The birch trees glow
and shimmer with trapped starlight
and the siskins dance
among the spidery branches
like fairy lanterns,
flickering green and yellow.
The boulders beside
the mountain track
that weaves through
the waking forest,
are blotched with
lichen – like an artist’s pallet
splattered with
earthly colours: browns, oranges, reds
and yellow; or like a
random map of some imagined land.
Mountains rise from
the mirrored loch, huge colossus,
some still capped with
snow, even in late May.
The landscape is alive
with noises: loons in the Bay
of Herrings
razorbills, guillemots
and the ever-present flurry of gulls,
white flashes in the
sunlight. A cuckoo calls from the rocks
above the house, a
skylark dances and sings on the breeze.
Two seals, eyes like
coal glide the mirrored surface of the loch
like ancients from a
lost civilisation. The land is stirring,
unfolding like a new
leaf.
There are bees on the
pussy willow, willow warblers
among the alders and
bluebells, summoned by the sun
to deck the mossy
banks.
Butterflies dare to
brave the scant flowers
on the woodland edge,
a small yellow butterfly, like a firefly,
skims the golden curve
of whins that erupt like sheets of flame.
The many-coloured
light casts brilliant patterns on the loch
And I am bedazzled
with the beauty of the place,
As the land gives way
to the rites of spring.
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