Atop Craigendarroch

I stitched and capered a sinuous ascent through the ferns

and treacherous granite traps

sharp as you like

Knavish roots and vines snatching all the way at my toecaps

and reached the summit
wheezing like a holed bandoneon

The green and ochre scabbed shield chaffed by ancient ice

delivering to me the stage upon which knurled and knotted Scotch pines writhe

captive in the fulsome rasping heather

To the east across the valley
a forest block cleared brown and bare

as if a giant finger had smudged the felted vibrating mass clean away
To the north the neighbouring hills flicker

emerald and black

their violet gorse veins seeping down toward the Dee
Tattered swatches of marengo billow in from the west

to whisper to the crests of the hemming high ground

above which a brace of swallows surf the thermals

to elegantly plunge and yaw

accompanied by the chack of a lone jackdaw.

You might think yourself marooned

on this igneous mizzen

if it weren’t for the hint of traffic and the bark of a dog
borne on the wind

from a thousand feet below

I had intended to reflect on the size of the universe

in the warm stillness of this perch

But those meditations have been flown and blighted

by the persistence of the vulgar and bloated bluebottle

and his parasitic brethren

whose sole intentions seem to be to penetrate my ear.

Martin Ricardo-Jones