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The House Of Trees (Part 10: The Fairy’s Lullaby)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, care, child, Dunvegan Castle, folklore, Gaelic lullaby, history, Isle of Skye, landscape, lullaby, MacLeod legend, mother, photography, Poetry, Scotland, Sidhe, song, Taladh na mna Sidhe, The Fairy Lullaby on January 23, 2013| 8 Comments »

Taladh na mna Sidhe, (The Fairy’s Lullaby)

She came as a whisper
From her own fair folk,
Over the bridge between worlds.
Called by the cries
Of the one forgotten, forlorn.

A shining face above the cradle,
Cold long feet upon the floor.
Golden as a graceful willow
In winter time on Camalaig Bay,
Silver as moonlight
On the flanks of Beinn na Creiche.

To hold and cradle
One small dreamer
Disturbed by the silence of a room,
The merriment of the hall.
The world found cold, empty
Wrapped once more in love
And soft singing:

Look, my child,
Fine limbed, small brightness,
Lithe and graced with all.
My dream eye
Sees the same one
A master amongst stallions,
Strong grasp, clear calling,
A glory of lordship
In the morning, laughing.

On the mountain,
Amongst the grass-warm breath
Of the peaceful kine,
A gatherer of silk milk,
Dressed in forest, dressed in snow,
Dressed in pasture sweet,
You my child, a habitation
Of delight.

The distant chink of harness
Shining in the setting sun
Leading your people
Harvest-home,
The chattering of women-folk,
The earnest sower.

You, who shall remember
The tenderness herein:
The warm womb,
The gift of my breast,
The throne of my knee.
Satisfied, content
Nurtured by the honey
Of dear love.

My lithe one,
My red and white one,
My strong yew sapling,
Dark green and handsome.
My laughing one,
Nodding golden iris by the shore,
Bright alder and birch leaning graceful.
A whisper, a chatterer, a sparkling of joy.
Last year, you were a seed in warm darkness.
Now you will soon be leaping high,
Running with song about the house,
About the fields, under cloud and sunlight.

May you not be harmed,
May you not be wounded,
May you not be slain,
But grow old and grey,
Crag-browed and wise,
A sharp nose for deceit,
A sharp eye for openness.

Child of warrior from the cold North,
Child of shadows, melting, lilting.
An in and an out you have,
A strong turning hope for peace.
A warrior’s hand you have for the land
Of the father of your father,
The mother of your mother.

The babe asleep,
She turned and left.
Tune turning in the air,
A waivering of rushlight,
A scent of honey milk.
A mother melting back
Into the weave of dream.
Footsteps soft fading,
Soft fading.

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The House Of Trees (Part 9: Seven Tears – Lamentations)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Freedom, Highlands, history, lamentations, landscape, photography, Poetry, religion, Scotland, seven tears, Skye, suffering, the house of trees, violence on January 23, 2013| 4 Comments »

Seven Tears: Lamentations

I would see them all gone:
The small black rags of malice
The small black rags of nightmare
A poison of harsh cold iron will.
Forbidding beauty, disdaining.
Who turns the flame of hope
To worms of despair.
A curse of faith despising life.

I would wish the gentle ones
Back in the deep glens,
By the loch-side:
The long chant, the ordered hours,
Prayers for all, care for all.
Chant in the cold night,
Praise in the dawn,
A haven, a refuge,
A fire of openness.

I would not leave the hills silent,
Nor barren, nor unsung.
I would not have them feared,
Nor mocked, nor misunderstood.

At very least, a common prayer:
The song of gathering in,
The song of weaving,
The song of sinew and patience,
The rock and sway of fruitful hours,
A song of peaceful construction.

This silent, bitter solace of hearts
This leaden, sullen lock-jaw –
A walled, guarded desolation
In the midst of shining presence.

We would not know freedom, even,
Were we feeding at its warm breast,
So torn and twisted our hearts
Have become.
So cursed by the darkness
Left to breed inside so bitter,
Bitter, wormwood would be sweet.

This long rent severance,
This decree of exile,
This proclamation of abandonment,
This churning mistrust peeling
Mind from heart, half from half,
Mothers mocked, sons burst open,
Daughters broken.

It was not the cry of a fox
At the cold centre of the night,
Nor gull ghosting on the water
That woke me into darkness.
It was the despair of a woman
Echoing hills and empty streets.
In the certain dark, ill-lit,
Wordlessly crying out,
Summoning the flicker of pain.
The endless distraught
Eternal wringings of sorrow,
Bloody clouts reddening
Water-lapped stone,
Consonants of spite,
Howling, sobbing vowels
Down the long years.
When shall it cease?

I, too, should leave by that bridge,
(would I could),
Leave the sullen solidity of pain,
The unforgotten sin, remorseless blame,
Not wasting one more word
On the forlorn rigidity of final hope
They cling to who have not already
Released clawing fingers and drowned.

I, too, would return to the twilight dance,
A weaving with purpose and poise,
An upholding, a reimbursing,
A constant, belonging chord.
Chant and chanter, strings of song,
No need, ever, to remember or forget.

Free from those who would sever the root
To free the tree, who would wash the soil
From each endeavour, strip the river
From its valley, would feed their children
To a red mouth of destruction

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The House Of Trees (Part 7: The Long Song)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black and white, dissatisfaction, edges, Freedom, history, hunger, Independence, landscape, photography, Poetry, Scotland, Skye, the house of trees, the Sidhe, time on January 20, 2013| 7 Comments »

The long song

The song is always: if only.
(Not the song of the trees
Not the song of the falling waters,
Nor the wind that carries the grey storm wrack),

But the song of those huddled about the fires,
Bone thin, crack-voiced.
And the song too
Of the squire and laird,
Dissatisfied with their winnings,
Their great gambled losses.

Only those covered by the hills
Covered by the rath, the dun,
The hawthorn bent and ringing,
Only the eternal dancers
Have found another song,
Abjuring Time,
Disregarding judgement.

They sing of the edges between things,
The instant when one slips into other,
The knife blade of love into hate,
The cry of the oystercatcher
That spins from joy to grief to joy,
And is all and is none of these things.

They know the call of gold,
Have tasted its dust.
They know the answer to freedom,
(What all seek and none understand),
Have left it, found it,
Given it up.
Those in dream need no other dream.

Those who know they are in dream
Delight in twilights,
The subtle glance,
The hesitant dance.

But here, bombastic, needy
Sure of something, the nation stands
Once more calling for something
That cannot be given.

It cannot be given,
This independence, this freedom you seek.
It cannot be offered, it cannot be bargained for,
It cannot be voted in, it cannot be passed in law.

You will never see it, never reach it.
Nor is it a haven, a prize, a reward, a right.

The house of freedom
Is the empty wall by the long shore.
The house of independence
Is a house open to clouds,
A mist of trees within.

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The House Of Trees (Part 6)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Fairy Bridge, fairy flag, fairy wife, folklore, history, landscape, loss, Macleod of Dunvegan, photography, Poetry, Scotland, separation, Skye, time on January 18, 2013| 6 Comments »

The fairy bridge

See the cars speeding fast and low
Along the thin, black tarmac ribbons,
Crisp laid over the rolling moors.
Hardly noticing,
Oblivious to the blur of heaped stones,
The dips and corners of bypassed histories.

Speeding around the proud, sleek corners
Leaping the old valleys left silent, shaded.
Easy, then, to miss the Fairy Bridge
Where MacLeod of Dunvegan
Found and lost his fairy wife
In a place between here and there,
Neither rock nor water, earth nor air,
A hunched road between hunched hills.

Left in sorrow,
(Impossible to span such a distinction of worlds,
Falling asleep for centuries
Or cursed with too much guiltless joy,
The dance never ending),
He returns to his empty home with a last gift:
A flag, furled against desperate times,
A promise of three victories out from despair.
Doomed to crumble, disappear in tatters,
Worm-eaten, forgotten, misplaced, tear-stained.

A thin withering, a frayed thread,
The clear glory imagined now dust,
A past that bartered its continuance
Without suspecting anything except valediction,
The clear glorious road ahead smudged with sunset storm,
A dark path abandoned by light.

The Fairy bridge,
Between time and space, here and there,
A feather touch of fame and fortune,
A moth touch of death, a kiss, a whisper,
A foot placed right, a foot placed wrong,
A slip, a sliver, a glint of gold, a refrain coded,
A yearning, a whole nation beguiled,
Mazed, lost, cast away,
(The blue distant shimmer, the smooth green hillside of freedom).

He doubts now:
Did he dream it? The long years of love and laughter,
The line and weight of beauty,
The grace of hand and fall of cloth?
And what was the cause?
What was done, what left undone,
What path unnoticed, what riddle unsolved?
What required answer not given
At the right time, the right place?

The song is: if only.
The grief of not knowing, or of knowing too late.
Gold cast away into mud, the firm, fast knot slipped.
To give and take is sacrifice,
To give the most must lose the most.

Swept away,
They have all been swept away,
By time, by foolishness, by a repayment of debts.
The land parceled, emptied,
Lorded over, an amusement for weekends,
A respite from care,
A cleared killing ground,
A desolation of aristocracies.

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The House Of Trees (Part 5)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clearances, desertion, house of trees, Isle of Skye, landscape, Loch of Ainort, Luib, memory, nature, photography, Poetry, ruin, Scotland, the gaelic language, the past on January 17, 2013| 3 Comments »

The house at Luib

It is not the same,

There on the other side

Of Beinn na Caillich,

Beside the dark loch waters,

Still and brown.

Beside the heron-guarded

Loch of Ainort.

The houses of stone

Grey-walled,

Under shadows.

It is not silent,

The house at Luib.

For how can a thing

So merged with the world

Not be full

Of the whisperings of the world,

Its sighed breathings?

Not mice, though,

Amongst the rafters,

But birdsong.

Nothing but a thatch

Of cloud

And a drift of mist

Above

The moss-green

Tumbled walls.

No door

To open in welcome.

No scent of peat nor brose.

No fire at all,

Except the spark of sunrise

And embers at evening.

A house of trees,

Whip-thin and tall:

There together birch and rowan,

Maple and willow,

Carpeting the hearth,

Scattering green and gold

(more gold than this house

Ever saw before,

And of richer worth than metal:

Bestowing the soil,

Brightening the eye

On autumn paths).

Those who called this home

Shall be long, long gone.

Not sleeping near

Listening to the oystercatcher

On the shore,

The raven

On the slopes of Scalpay.

They will be lost

Across the seas.

Deserted by kindness,

Faces washed in salt,

Eyes empty of hope,

Hollowness growing

By the long mile.

And so it is

A house of trees,

A conversation

Of saplings.

This house empty of laughter,

Empty of singing.

No longer the home of men

Nor the smell of wood-smoke.

The bright trees growing,

Their root sinews sucking

The debris of memories:

Branches conversing together,

A chattering of leaves.

The old, sweet language

Sighing away

On the wind

Over the dark waters.

A soft calling

Of the lover to bed;

A hum, a song,

A tune for working;

By the fireside:

The telling of tales –

The day’s pouring,

Silver, gasping catch

Out on the wave.

So they have all become trees.

The memories growing to stories.

Casting seeds,

Changing with the seasons.

Our thoughts,

Boughs and branches.

Our intentions,

An agitation of leaves.

Our dreams,

Rooted hidden, out of sight

But deeper,

Deeper than we would even guess

Sustaining our place

Gripping rock:

The spinning world.

We would want for nothing

In our own place of belonging.

No distant yearning,

No sad lament

(except the lament of edges).

For always the living

Wraps the dead

As the ivy the stone

As the moss and lichen cling

’til they too become sky,

A dust

On the storm winds

Of autumn.

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The House of Trees (part 4)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cil Chroisd, four trees, Highlands, hooded crows, house of trees, Isle of Skye, landscape, memorial, nature, photography, Poetry, Scotland, the dead, yew trees on January 16, 2013| 5 Comments »

The House of Trees

Cill Chroisd

On the road to Elgol

That dances its way

In the dark and light

Of moving skies.

Breathing up and down

Sliding beside loch and ben.

Between the green toes

Of Beinn na Caillich –

(she, who, giving birth to the land,

Remains unconcerned

But ever watchful)

Beneath the raven’s wing,

Beneath its long, far cry;

Amongst the short grass,

Sheep-cropped and hummocked,

A blanket fit for sleep and dream,

They have placed the corners

Measuring the ordered landscape

Of the dead.

Here lies a MacLeod

Under the brown breast

Of Beinn na Caillich.

He has not angels by his head,

Nor angels by his feet,

But four eternal trees –

Green flames of yew –

To shade him from too much sun,

Too much starlight.

Four trees

Grown from his bones,

Fed by the exhalation

Of his long sigh in sleep

And promised rest.

They will be a shelter

From the four quarter’s winds

That winter howl along

The dark glen.

They will be a shelter

For the small birds

Singing him joyful

‘Til his Judgement.

A sure roof

Outlasting the crumbling of walls –

The green, sky-stretched,

Wind-hugged branches

To bear him back home.

Here he shall have peace.

Peace, but for the hooded crows.

Peace, but for the sheep

Tugging the small, green tumps.

Peace, but for the passing wanderer, curious.

They have built for him

A house of earth

For the earth of his body.

They have planted for him

A house of trees,

Seeded from his flesh,

Grown from his sinews

So that he can live for eternity

In holy wood.

They have built for him

A house of song-

The wind in the ivy,

The swan and the curlew-

For his soul to stretch out.

Who would not want a mountain

As a headstone?

Without cold in the bones,

A delight to watch for centuries.

Without a watery eye:

The storm winds, a delight.

And to drink the peace

Of the cloud-tangled rushes

In the evening and morning time,

Rippling with diver and otter.

Who would not melt to moorland?

Rich peat mixed with memories

Of the long-gone,

The onward patter of rain.

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Reflections On Water

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, Breadalbane, clouds, Cuillins, dawn, dawn sky, glen garry, hills, Isle of Skye, landscape, lochs, mist, nature, photography, Poetry, portree skye, relections, Scotland, sky, Sleat, sleat isle of skye, TheTrossachs, travel, trees, Trotternish, valleys, water, waves of light on November 13, 2012| 9 Comments »

We recently travelled to the Isle of Skye and the Western Highlands of Scotland. October in Scotland is glorious and the weather was good – not too overcast, not too sunny – so that we were able to see the land in many of its moods and atmospheres. I have selected a few images around the subject of water. I hope you enjoy the visual essay.