The Peat Dance
As the black peat frames
the mounds and rolling hills
of purple heather and
fluorescent lichen,
the sea battles its way
into the patient coast,
carving their passage
upon the liminal shelf
of sand and stone
as the hungry waves sink
their bite into the stretch
of a voe.
The bog collects life teeming
beneath layers of time
captured beneath a mirror
of water as the woollen
fall of a ghastly sheep,
it makes it move to the rhythm
of the secret songs of
trowes shared behind
the crackling peat fire as
deadly matter begins to live,
dances gently
to new movements of
darkness and deconstruction
and the organic return
to the air
as a log in the fire.
Shepherd’s Lantern
for my collie Skye
As you sleep on my feet
warm as a child’s breath
with scent of sleepiness
deposing gently
on those same feet
you sunk your teeth into
not too long ago
I think of who made you,
the line of unhinged
herders of movement,
ancestry of Skye
moving through centuries
to embody you,
the perfect culmination
of their obsessions
and cries of joy
and perfect white tuffs
on the tip of each tail
brushing year after year
as a cone of light
washing over the vast
rural darkness:
the golden hare
that each of those chased
fit as an arrow
galloping with energy
to order the chaos
and mark the way home
for all the shepherds
lost out the light of day,
seeking the lantern
of white ahead,
that which drew circles
of light as ellipses around
the disorder of sheep,
invisible constellation
across a sky of green hills,
and lifted the earth
underneath while flying
towards a hare’s gasp,
a bird’s arch leaving the earth.
Perhaps you still dream
of the ancient chase and
tailing the herd
and leading the way home
after a long day’s work.