Wild geese fall
from clouds
snow on their wings.
Quietly, love descends
on Port of the Ruins.
Druid Sun drowses,
cloaked in raven clouds
spills horn light.
His crimson dregs
stain wolf-pelt moss
draped over dolerite,
thrown ribs, fishbone bracken.
Stain feathers drifting
from a heron purse.
The rushes burn low.
Aelia stumbles up
Hill of the Rocks.
Grasps starr, dagger-sharp,
breathes heather.
A night bird churrs alarm.
Above her
a sturdy lamb
mounts the outcrop
its fleece, dull amber
behind the dark velvet mask
fierce eyes flicker.
Starr: a coarse grass
The cloister library
a mahogany womb,
one O glass bars
the keening winds of Iona.
Bent over dark wood
an illuminated gospel,
you trace the eternal knot:
man, head swallowed by a beast
mental torture of the lost.
Ruby swirls, gold chevrons,
note the geometry of God:
the Celtic charm to bind evil
a swastika.
Topsy-turvy, border
beard-pullers tumble
down violet-green
to the underworld.
Crazy. You understand,
write. The rare jewels
you have dredged from chaos:
poems, their burning colours
fired by pain.
a wolf, smalt eyes burning
with a clear flame
a rowan torch,
this Celtic warrior
smoulders into song
in Relig Oran's dolman chapel
commands the flow of voices
over stone
invokes the roving spirit
of one long gone
murmurings, that echo
an ocean flooding in
so, light strikes a silver cross
through the graven lintel
as solstice sun
skeletons seated in an ancient barrow:
tongues of fire
could descend,
the howl of grief
`I want him back'
tinder dry bones
and this Cave of Death
rattle with dancing
Relig Oran: Iona's burial ground
Wild and wanton as fire, you fear me
for devil's wood, a witchy tree
I root in dried blood and, dancing
over graves, blow blossom
as the cuckold corpse sings.
Decked to kill, in lark-shit lace
or stoat-eye beads, I stink
of pussykin's pee.
Caress me...
I can heal your bone-creak, banish
rheum, will bear sweet ebon berries.
June, gowned in gold-green leaves
toss you froth for cool cordial --
cream florets for a fragrant champagne.
Answer: An elder bush.
I ran to the Hill of Wine
to gather elderberries and broom
as you pleaded in a dream.
Fog scrawling from Port of the Coward
blotted woad-dipped sky
and blurred my vision.
Lost, I found only hemlock
and goblin apples, rotting ochre among thorns.
A peevish wind fretted, the chill withering
my bittersweet bouquet, tossed
grey as grief, to the Lapwings' Lochan
Now I know you will not visit again.
Celtic goddess, your nicknames betray you: Panic, Frenzy,
Scald Crow of Battle. A Phantom Queen, raunchy as Sheela-na-gig,
who flaunts all on church corbels.
Ravenous as Sul, goddess of dark, underground waters, who devoured
humans; whose lust for Lugh, son of light, spawned the hot springs at
Bath:
on Samhain eve you seduced the Dagda, your large-thighed consort,
and laid him in Bed of the Couples Glen.
Dell of the Cock, Sacred Hollow
the Trough,
down Bed of the Earth Nuts
we come at last
to grey-green starr,
stubble of the Machair.
A grass tuffet. I squat
munching stilton cobs,
glance back
below Eagle's Nose:
a crimson fleece, a rust harrow.
Tufts flutter,
black hoodies tug at bone.
I taste the warm salt
of blood, smell rain.
Blue veins pulse,
in my hand, a knife...
`Why don't you?'
As Aelia turns to go
across scrub
cropped by grubby sheep,
I see the hill
where Columba met with angels
burn again
in a furnace of white wheat.
Hoodie: the hooded crow
Colum, Demal's hostage
wrestles with airy demons
tossing dice for him
they offer a skull-chalice
brimming with nettle broth.
It's not easy to be alone
near the Well of the North Wind:
the sky, heavy-jowled,
bags under its eyes, thunders.
The corrie mirrors vacancy.
Mouse-brown heath
and quilled couch grass,
rasping with crickets
offer no relief.
Silence, leaden cumuli part.
Glittering ransom coins --
a lark
giddies up
Axal's thrown shaft
the White Sword of Light.
Colum: St Columba
Axal and Demal: his personal angel and devil.
I have crawled on beaches,
hands sticky with blood and tar
clambered rocks where
the guillemot draggles
oil-slicked wings.
No more angel than a shag,
a junkie tossed to the gulls,
I gobbled up my nightmare
and retched on the dark.
Now, I treasure-trail barefoot
squat on dunes soft as breasts
where water-flags surge
and lambs shudder the ewe.
Here, in this thin place
I choose to dream.
Milk-blue terns
light
on water
like pebbles skim my longing --
for the wild goose
whose wings, alone
can shelter.
Seals nudge Aelia,
who plunges, rises
gulping brine, strikes for
Iona, crumpled in a kirtle of mist.
The sky is the colour of a hawk.
Sudden cramp, she doubts
falls back
plummets
the void. Seal bodies
rising, buoy her.
Beaching Big Mouth Point
she slumps on boulders,
the slime of egg wrack.
A peat smooring.
In a mantle of blown smoke
I kneel, stroke her gaunt face.
Where potato famines once raged,
we hold a pigfeast. Swigging mead
watch Brant geese
rise
flames to a metal sky.
Wiping salt and oil from my lips
I crack an almond.
The rough husk
thrown
pools mango-light and deep laughter.
stepped
from the shadows.
`Have half' rough oatcake
crumbled.
Dark eyes
& a raven voice
laughed, `Arty farty.'
Sharp Liverpool
she darts an Arran hug.
Face pale, mouth resolute
turns
& strides through glass
her future, sure as hell
is decay
& the muckspattered nest
of the hoodie.
(Barnacle Goose)
Crack of black alder,
wind barks across marsh
and a feather sculls
the dark lochan.
Stamped on mud
your web-arabesque
melts to grey.
I am drunk on salt.
No croodle of doves
bloated milk,
can hold my hunger.
Migrant lover
son of thunder
fly the frozen landes.
Come upon me,
kneeling in the dust
and I will cup my hands:
a beggar for love.