craigdevine88-dkjtq

Skirting of Loch Garten


The full moon 
Hovered 
like a bodhran 
In the black 
sky.
I contemplated 
The great 
Mystery. 
The dark drum 
of desire 
beat across 
the famished
 nape 
Of stretched skin.  
The sky 
turned blue 
As a vanishing 
Saltire.
A bleached 
plaid 
of snow 
Settled on 
the shoulder
Of the Cairn
 Gorm. 
The moon,  
its stone
 brooch. 
The creaking Forest
 is scorched 
With the frosted   
rigging 
Of winter. 
The silver 
webbing 
Still sticking 
To the bark 
& boughs 
& bog-heavy 
paths 
Of the blasted 
forest floor.        
All is bleak      
Birthed
& crystal 
Clotted 
In the arctic 
Ribbing, 
The shivering sack
Of this ice
Caul.
How are we
part
Of it all? 

The very best 
language points
 to somewhere 
beyond Language.

I gazed upon 
the glittering 
scar 
Of the Spey 
Guttering 
its passage
Through the vast 
geological 
wedge 
scoured 
between 
the Monadhliath’s 
& the Cairngorm 
Massif. 
The palimpsestic 
Moon 
receded 
Like Brancusi’s
 Sleeping Muse. 
A face, as white 
As a child’s 
dream, 
As naked 
As the stripped
Winter coppice, 
That slowly 
Recedes out 
Of focus.
It reminded me 
of Paolozzi
& his shattered 
head. 
Maybe the dream 
Is an image 
Of darkness 
That is like
 a mirror
That comes from 
The long 
shadow 
Of our sleep? 

Maybe that was 
just my hangover. 

We zigzagged 
through 
the Anagach Woods
Like ontological 
scarecrows. 
I felt as fenestrated 
as a penny whistle 
after my tatty scones 
& Lorne sausage
 fired roll. 
The black coffee 
gurgled 
In my bagpipe belly 
Like a bad 
argument. 
I was as fat & full 
As the Capercaillie 
In the Caledonian
 forest. 
The Spey snaked 
through the glen 
Like a crooked 
adder, or a broken
 flute. 
I sat on a rock, 
considering 
My indigestion: 
when men 
constructed
 language 
They lost 
how to read 
The book of nature
- that is 
How I feel 
now. 
In that sense 
We are all
 existential refugees
Seeking a home 
In the Mystery 
of our Being. 
Our Being 
is like a child 
Gasping for breath 
Under the rubble 
of facts. 

As we walked 
between 
The pale pines, 
stubbled heather,
the battered 
bracken 
& stilted bilberry, 
Everything 
had been shaved 
back 
to bone, 
By the rough 
razor 
Of winters blade. 
These great trees 
Fated
 for poles, 
posts, 
& pit props; 
or tongued 
Out for
 turpentine 
& tar. 
We walked on 
counting 
our breaths
Between 
our steps.
Metronomic mind
Unconsciously 
counting 
Temporality.  
The Mind is 
numerological 
machine
- but it cannot 
calculate Reality. 

As we skirted 
the Garten Loch 
I caught 
a glimpse 
Of a redwing, 
then a 
Temminck’s Stint
& a Siskin. On the 
other side
Of the frozen loch 
I was caught
 in the gaze 
Of a Roebuck. 
I was momentarily 
Transfigured: 
  animals are 
attracted to the god
 in humanity, 
  they see 
the Divine 
 clearer 
than we do
& sense more 
 of us 
than we do
 of ourselves. 
With a blink 
 it dissolved 
Like the rot
  holes 
In the old
 pines. Emptiness 
Filled 
 with fertile 
Ruptures, 
 Shafts
  prolific 
With larvae
 & eggs
Of a monstrous 
 silence
That is the prayer
Of a forgotten
  primordial 
 God
 of trauma. 

The ontological 
 debris 
Of the fall. 
 The silence, 
Like a great 
 Toad
Eating slugs,  
swallows 
 the self. 
 
Instantaneously. 

This self 
 that is a luxury 
Of surplus- 
 as I watch 
The wood ants
  like thoughts 
Of a single mind: 
 they construct 
Their tower 
 of Babel
On the thin 
 soaked soil 
And the ice cracks 
As the canopies 
 creak 
And the moorlands 
Burn 
 like a quivering 
Heart. 
The red deer 
 tumbles 
From the peaks 
And the black 
 faces 
Of the sheep 
 as though
Dipped 
 in the darkest 
Night- 
 the tooth fungi 
Acid hard. 

 Is free will 
a daydream
 in the work 
Of the universe? 

Seedlings grow. 
 The crossbill 
Walks over 
 the bell heather 
& crowberry. 

  Is this ‘I’,
 this self, 
The ultimate form 
Of existential
 plagiarism? 

The delicate 
 flowerings
 of creeping 
lady’s-tresses,
Wintergreen
 & twinflower.
On the final bend 
of the Loch 
We lost 
 ourselves 
In the Forest 
 of Abernathy 
And spoke 
 of the devil’s tooth 
We had seen, 
 bleeding bright,
A raging red, 
 spotted with ruby 
Beads. 
 As we made
  our way 
Back to Grantown 
& the cool articulation
  of the savage 
    flesh. 

This winter 
Is not permanent 
It is only a refuge 
For shadows. 
It is a reset 
For purification. 
I could hear
the music 
Playing
  in the strings 
Of the branches.
I remembered 
The Moon 
The Frost 
The Roebuck 
 & then I realised:  
 
The Great Mystery 
Involves us 
as part 
Of its investigation.