View from a mountain garden (part one)
a house is there,
below the dome of mountain.
in days past
it might have been said
that it nestled ‘neath
the beetling brow
of raven-dark crags.
it is where
the high lands,
the sky lands, stumble and slide
in rough, grey steps
to crouch, dreamy eyed
on dappled sunlight in grassy pasture,
no longer scoured bald with fast airs,
nor woven grey in slow fog.
just here, now, they open slow stone hands,
release the waters, silver and peat-brown,
in streams and bogs and falls.
a tumble of white rush, an ache
of distant noise between
silent rustling oaks, lost in
deep and distance that is measured
and marked by slow drifting sheep,
the pools of sunlight scudding east.
it is a long time staying still, a dwelling,
piled up, re-walled, obscured, uncovered, re-used.
a pronunciation of name, a genealogy of comfort
and shelter, hope and hopelessness, a garden
and a rusting, a perch between here and heaven
and a bell to the beyond beyond that.
these are the colours of a day.
a day before Spring with cold winds
and a sun remembering warmth
and the palest of blue,
fragile blue,
mist-filled, hazy skies……
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