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