Among ancient groves
Temptress burns to die for,
Frolicking down the mountainside
For a million years and thousands more.
Really, could I have died?
Bonnie Pictish stream, tumbling,
Churning old but ever young.
Go on! Race on! Sparkling mercury
Veins and licking tongues.
Ne’er stop your gabbling nor
Rubbing shoulders with rock and tree -
As old as you but resolute
As all good friends should be.
The rocks remain, as Maxwell said,
Though they will grow new clothes -
Submerged and drenched - in verdant green
Among the ancient groves.
Oak, birch, alder – they’re old too
As grounded they come and go,
And in their turn and turn around
They grow and die and grow.
Hearing the talk Pictish folk heard -
Aye, and Jacobites too -
Is intimate intercourse
With a world we all once knew.
*
Cascading wannabe mermaid
You know little of this,
So yarn and gossip away
As a sister to a sis.
A sis who can’t be listening
For all that she gives back;
Perhaps she listens but ne’er hears
Rock-music or the craic.
So swerve round ’em and plunge
To deep dark mysterious pools.
There, rest awhile and recover
Your bubbles’ sparkling jewels.
Then take up the race again,
Innocent and henny fresh,
Brawling on, unruly, free
In your age-old youth - careless.
Ay, careless waif -
Reeling in Caledonian hills -
Twirl and swirl in pirouettes
Showing your petticoat frills.
How can you be so young
Yet so old synchronously?
In these tumbling ravines?
Take down your wisdom to the sea.
Within an aqueous soul
There is no pretence for us;
Columns of freshwater have
Pure memory and substance.
But that great repository
Of cruel fools, distant still;
Predators and prey,
Murderers and victims, if you will.
What chronicles do they hear
From fresh up the mountainside?
Alas, now fresh no more
In salt and plastified seacide.
So, Mistress Burns, stay awhile
In your eddies and rock pools,
Do not go cascading on
To break your heart chasing fools.
Stay here in our mild rainforest -
The verdant groves we found -
With great rampaging primordial
Beauty all around.
Woody, wet and cloud-laden
The old Picts are talking rain.
And Mistress Burns keeps racing
Trailing ripples like a mane.
I clamber up the burn
And probe all her secret places.
But she cares not, for I come and go,
And leave no traces.
Bird-singing water
Falls not to ground. Instead, vaporous
Misty veils plump up em’rald
Pillows of billowing moss.
Then tangled oak limbs and briars bend,
Grinning mischievously
Beneath crusty bearded
Lichen, intent on tangling me.
But would I care - in an
Exquisite sylvan hideaway -
If emerald depths close over me
And, in splendour, I drown today.
© RM Meyer
Highlands, April/May 2022
