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West Highland

If I were to lie back, this is the landscape I’d become –  
blanched tussocks, copses of pine,
shining lochs, station platform signs translated
to a language I can’t pronounce;

lazy fences, serious houses, two shaggy rams
by a pleated auburn stream,                                                          
alder, beech and dithery aspen,
Munros shouldering the lost weight of snow;

a blaze of gorse along the verge, pylons marching
over bog and moor, the ninety-six miles we walked last year
with backache, slippery from sweat and midge spray,
the craic of good friends keeping us upright
as we lost and found the Way.

 

(published in Agenda, summer 2016)

Copyright © Sharon Black 2017