The Visitors
Weihnachten -
She visits me
To eat and chew the fat.
In the narrow day
I show her three
Ocean's edge villages
Between black clouds'
Baleful pillages
Gouts of snow
So hungry for light
The clotted sheep
Drain from cream to piss and parchment
Powdered wheel -rut shadows drift to blue
For her this is a sightseeing trip
She drives - a practiced mapped
Explorer's grip
Comparing all with other coasts
Too numerous for full recall
Touring beauty is her goal
Between the pauses in my sight
This place is full of ghosts
I'll walk with when my limbs unlock
By narrow strips of cliff based rock
The restless ocean claws house walls.
Safer here, on the last of land,
The driven built on boulder strand
And learned to live in a ravenous maw
Gamrie, Pennan, Crovie
All three
We briefly tour
She notes the runs from gable-end shutters
And names them rust on tainted walls
I smell them as blood that downpours still
As sliding mud from the fear filled hill
At Crovie two puffins turn on a stone
To watch this odd pair pass along
The woman bright, inquisitive, ahead
The limping man adrift, contrite
Shaking his head to clear his sight
Lunging a little to loosen the hold
Of the lilting musket-ball
Beckoning
Songs of the dead
© John Mackie, Gamrie, Pennan, Crovie, December 2009
Photos © Lynne MacDonald
