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The House Of Trees (Part 13: Equation)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 28, 2013| 4 Comments »

Yew textures

13

Equation

Belonging and separation
These, the truth of all relating.
Belonging and separation,
These, the fabric of all existences.
Belonging and separation:
The biology of being
The song of the heart
The engine of thoughts
The migration of souls
The tide of peoples
The stick and goad of leaders
The yearning of lovers
The fear of death.

Staying in one place:
The rowan, the birch
Taking up, letting go,
Bending to withstand rain,
Rising in springtime.

A blessing to all
A curse to none.
The house of trees
Ever remaining.

I breathe in
The wood of my own making:
The spliced double oak
Of my lungs
Shattering separation,
Drawing in life to life.
Feeding the forest
Of my blood, a red tide
Whispering the twin rivers
Of extension and return.
My own yew and alder,
Heart life, deep-rooted.

A dream of trees,
This world.
A home of trees.
A house of trees,
An open sanctuary,
A boundary of contentment.

The bright tumbling birches-
I breathe their fluid lightning,
Sucked in to my belly.
Spinning, revolving, sweeping away
Sorrow, liquid atonement,
A clarity of spiral song,
A reverberation of pure note.

I breathe in the star snow of rowan,
A descent of clustered frost,
Rock-borne, persistent.
A waterfall descent of night
Shot through with sparks of song.
A tumbled universe
Bridging beginnings and ends.
A resonance of watching silence.

I breathe the resin air of pine,
A seed of taste on the tongue-tip.
Awakened presence, reminder of place.
I breathe out the distant glimmer
Through the centre of my eyes,
Arrow-straight, target-less,
Horizon’s endless pull.

The tree of memory.
The tree of branching thought.

I breathe the sweep of ash,
The straight, silent spear tip of it,
Key to all houses.

I breathe the shattering quiver
Of aspen the whisperer.
A fountain of echoes,
Shaking each nerve tip
With rippled delight.

I breathe without movement
A perfect balance of oak.
Remaining poised,
Certain stitch, well held.

And I breathe a pool of yew,
Contracting, expanding, bubbled time,
A well of silence,
A well of time.

Half here, half elsewhere,
The dancers know that tune
Of leaf and root, galliard of the seasons.
The slow inhalation of moments,
The gnat-cloud of thought
Dispersed and reformed
In new pools of sunlight.

The house of trees:
Allowing the dark,
Allowing the stillness,
Acquiescing to gravity
And the yearning for light.
Placed, established, settled.
Whilst we,
Free to wander
But rootless and unsatisfied,
Busy to hide the doubt of silence,
The insistence of other questions.
Always running away, scurrying.
Better stories
Awaiting beyond.

It is time (surely) to
Attain a place,
An open view,
learning to remain.

Over the hills of Knoydart
The clouds have settled.
Dawn stills the waters
Between Raasay and the deep wood.
Distilled essence,
Liquid morning.
All roads and paths
To elsewhere
Are empty.

The house of trees:
A beginning and an end
Of remembering.

tall trees

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The House Of Trees (Part 12: The Singing Wood)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 27, 2013| 4 Comments »

magic wood

12

The Singing Wood

In the tangled thicket
Blackthorn barbs of thought
With no safe way to turn
Suspended, doubtful, tired,
A bright berry yet –
Container of seed, small hope
Only requiring its portion
Of sun and soil.

A dream of all the islands
Bridged and bounteous
Dangerous Sounds, riptides of recrimination,
Gravestones of sorrow
Mapped, but foresworn.
The few that foolish fought
Squabbling, slaying the hopes
Of all others, forgiven
But no longer exalted.
Each land with its sweet air
Breathing new life into its own
Sweet song, strong language
Not misered, but known by all
Shaped, gloried, delighted in.

The blessings of all required by all.
The gold of happenstance
A fountain of benevolence.
No capercaillie strut, no clash
Of antlered rut – lords only
Of knowledge and kind words.
All requiring all, sustaining all.
In the flash of day between
Long night and long night
The hearth of kindness
The food of companionship.

Islands no longer prisons of belief
Walled by the bones of the slain.
Each a tree: oak, ash, thorn,
Birch, mazzard, distinct, shining,
A singing wood of distinction,
Where roots sustain
Woven tight together
Where branches catch light,
A net of bright breezes dancing.
Where trunks are lithe, given space,
Grow strong,
Sheltered and warmed by all.
Islands of the blessed,
Apple islands,
Shining in sunlit seas.

woods at Tokavaig

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The House Of Trees (Part 11 – The Tasting Of Edges)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 24, 2013| 10 Comments »

moss cave

11

The tasting of edges

Here is how it is,
How it was:
From the vastness of sleep
A coagulation, a gravitation
Towards the poignant edge.
The bliss of voiceless silence
Shaped and constrained:
Electrical motion, remembering, defining
The surge of emotion, the
Tumble of language, the assertion
Of primacy, constraint, neural nets
To catch and take hold, own,
Possess, reject, disown, demean.

The walls of this house,
Our house,
Sure against the gale,
Black and warmed.

Here’s the truth of it:
This language is not my own,
Not my words, not my syntax,
Not my thoughts, nothing new.
History: the reiteration
Of the forgotten blood
Still roaring changeless
Down the rivers of the years.

Here we are:
Rooted, belonging,
Our right,
A place to return to,
Warm in the soot-blackened darkness
(The winds screaming, battering, squeezing
Sound from tumbling dust).

A silver flash on the black waters,
Leaping fish way beyond the heron’s gaze.
The tawny glen, its tawny sides
Closing in as day’s end darkens.
Where are the fires?
Where are the voices?
The footsteps of those returning home,
The yawns of babes
Turning in belly-filled sleep?

The roaring tide has left.
Its sound diminishes.
The white, wheeling gulls
Are silent specks, the dark horizon.

We are left at a peace
We do not want,
Wordless sorrow for the misplaced.

I’ll tell you of the purest emotion,
Feeling that is free of judging,
Free of qualification.
It is the only language of the heart.
Music, the language without definition,
The summoning of tears and smiles,
Our greatest blessing to the universe.
A song, wordless and unequivocal,
A language universal, sublime,
Fearful, shaking the roots of things,
A net for the Almighty’s scatterings.

(I would barely trust one
Who could not find a tune
With nimble fingers,
Who could not speak verse
As if it were his own heart talking,
Whose words stay cowled behind
Heavy drapes of seemly logic,
Whilst inward, seethes and rails
Against opinion not his own.)

It is not here
In the dream of standing alone.
It is not here
In the upright light of independence.
Uprooted, it is not possible to find a place,
Poor and worthless, it is not possible
To find gold or glory.
It is the same voice
As it ever was:
The clever words well-weighted,
Reasonable.

The rain on the roof,
The wind at the door.
We huddle
Holding the weaving of stories,
The paths telling how we got here,
The choices, the turns, the betrayals.
Cold draughts sweep abandoned corners.

The water does not fight the rock,
It tunes its song and flows around.
It is neither this nor that.
The stepping stones in the flood –
Not the only way to cross.

This house of trees –
It is a house of despair,
A house of howling winds.

This house of trees –
It is a bounty of bright life,
A re-population of delight.

This house of trees –
It is a signal to all
The tyranny of the past has fled.

This house of trees –
It is a plight of bitterness,
An empty, starved gesture of despair.

Delight and despair –
Sunlight and shadows on the hills.
Holding firm is not the way of life.
Freedom and independence, not
A way to understand life.
The making of edges
Is the sound and silence of the tune,
A convolution of anticipation.

Each edge, though,
Neither this, neither that.
We define too closely,
Barter truth for surety
Miss the paradox,
Hold too tightly.

The bright edge is a sword
That severs as the sunlight is a sword
That blinds the sight.

Coming over the hill –
The sharp curtain of the Cuillins,
The still waters of Ord.

Belonging or not belonging:
I borrow my breath
From the exhalation of sparrows
I borrow my sight
From the sparkle of waterfalls
I borrow my heart
From the song of dust and worm
I borrow my words
From the whispers of the dead,
From MacLeod under the sky,
From the white bones, the bleached bones.

I am nothing
But a continuance
Nothing but a path
Made by those gone on before
A house of trees
A house of birdsong
A house of utterance
A forever
Dreaming of a walled instant
Of peace.

BlackCuillins Ord

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 23, 2013| 8 Comments »

Loch Dunvegan2

10

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.

wooded falls1

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 23, 2013| 4 Comments »

kyleakin sky

9

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

Dawn Kyleakin2

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The House Of Trees (Part 8)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 21, 2013| 11 Comments »

036DunveganShore

9 : Hunger

Across the long years
Most falls away forgotten.
Only a few fragments of song
On the scented wind,
A few stinging scars, tight and bitter,
Too highly regarded, dog-ends
Of disastrous choices,
Fit meat only for tales
Not for policies, not for futures.

Where there is gold:
There the cold-eyed, sly-smiled gather.
Where there is strife:
The carrion-eaters swoop in.

The hoodie cries
(Pecking at the eyes and brains of lambs),
Give us our freedom.
Too long have we been hunted,
Hung slack and bloody on barbed wire.

The martens cry
(As they bury into the bellies
Of the flock),
Give us our independence
To feed where we will
The endless, remorseless hunger
That comes summer or winter,
At ice-melt and frost fall.

The wily foxes circle,
Scenting an opportunity of gold,
Warm red crunch
In the dark hay loft.

To be left at peace
To be unhindered and honest,
Not to be slighted nor chivied,
Herded and diminished,
Nor subjected to the slow death
Of parasites,
Their cunning confusions,
Tongues of deceit,
Gold-grabbing fingers.

The freedom to belong
Is born with your each new breath,
Not with long lines of bloodshed,
Not with boundary stones.

Only when the bones crumble,
Where the fat feeds the soil
When the breath sighs, mingling
With the sedges on the loch-side,
Do we wholly belong.

Those who stand here,
And those who have died here:
They have the right to belong,
Like old MacLeod belongs,
Named and pinned under heaven
Until Time wipes even
The slumbering mountain away.

The ocean river squeezed through Sleat,
Fast, eternal,
At last leapt by stone.
The distant shore, desolate, silent
Hands reaching, never meeting.

Where you make your centre
Is where you are.
Where you belong
Your heart alone knows.
There is no language worth speaking
If it is not in kindness.
That it moves, whether fast or slow,
Voice and song
Are our only gifts to the universe.

We are not adversaries who struggle
For small freedoms, for the upper hand.
There is too much to be lost,
There is not enough to go around,
Never a second chance
When the wolves make the choices
Of who and when and where
A sacrifice is required.

From what will you escape?
What fiscal policy,
What redistribution of wealth,
Will free a pinched, aching heart
Filled with fear and debris,
The slurry of history,
The failures of others.

I have tasted a whisky in the hills,
Honey warm and smooth,
That in the city burned black and harsh…..

hawthorn,Ord

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 20, 2013| 7 Comments »

windswept

7

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.

falls

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The House Of Trees (Part 6)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 18, 2013| 6 Comments »

Skye road

6

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.

ferns

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The House Of Trees (Part 5)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 17, 2013| 3 Comments »

From Broadford

5

      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.

Beinn Na Caillich, Broadford

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The House of Trees (part 4)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2013| 5 Comments »

CillChroisd2

The House of Trees

4

       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.

110RoadToElgol

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