Sunday 15 January 2017

One bright, beady eye

Between Goldsitch and Eynhallow

Goldsitch Moss

I am not heathen but I respect and honour those wild northern gods and sometimes they feel very close…
  
One bright beady eye
 
Goldsitch Moss
Goldsitch Moss
Trembles with life,
A vibrant, simmering
Shimmer of sphagnum green.
Willow holds the edge
Of the frog-calling bog,
And birch climbs the crags,
Trailing a leaf-fall of
Delicate blades,                                 
While bilberry coyly flirts,
In purple,
Seducing visitors,
Into impromptu, lip-stained feasts.
Heather’s leaves and scented flowers
Belie the twisted determination,
Of rope-roots
Knotting rock to peat,
Tying the world together,

While Odin sits
On a grit-stone throne,
Watching the world go by
Through one bright, black, beady eye.
 
Midhowe Broch
Barely the beat of a raven’s wing,
To carry his will
From Memory to Thought,
From the Moss to the Sea.

Wet skins,
Take a breath,
Barely the draw of a longship’s oars
From Midhowe to Gurness,
The sail flaps,
Billows into blowing cheeks,
Straining,
Slowly,
Reluctantly,
The prow yields to the wind,
Lifting,
Storm-runner
Surge-cutter,
Foam-rider,
Wave-breaker.

The Sound swells, races
Lifts the longship, runs,
Drops, suddenly, into
The turquoise calm
Of a seal-wife bay
Behind the Holy Island.
 
Eynhallow Sound beyond the Broch of Gurness
Odin broods,
On his gritstone throne,
Watching the world,
Through one bright, black eye,
Pecking holes
In my heart.
But Freyr
Picks a path into my soul
And I am filled
By the hope of
A God made of wind and oak-leaves
And the Boar who bristles
In the thicket.

Orkney - raven - Huginn? Muninn?


Goldsitch Moss is a Staffordshire Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve near my home in Buxton
Eynhallow, and  Midhowe and Gurness Brochs (I haven't linked the brochs - start at Eynhallow and make the journey yourself) are in Orkney
Goldsitch Moss

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