Hill Fort
A palimpsest of people’s lives
this hilltop is a manuscript
great chunks of which have not survived:
see, where the earthen banks have slipped.
Then there are lacunae where
the ploughman – not unlike a scribe
reusing rolls – has brought his share
through old work, tossing stones aside.
A fragment, half of which has gone
to feed the wind – insatiable
and writing its own story on
the weathered vellum of the hill.
Even the pollen, buried deep
below my feet, has tales to tell –
still dreaming, in its wintry sleep
of when the ice sheets rose and fell.
A reading knowledge of the land
reveals what is recorded here
and though it’s hard to understand
the underlying sense is clear.
As evening falls, I walk across
this written and unwritten ground –
my footprints footnotes to its loss:
a poem waiting to be found.
Seeking
That red kite I saw two days ago
from the cottage window
feeling its way over a furrow
in the wind: I know
what it sought in the ebb and flow
of air, in every undertow
and updraft – ready to throw
the rough pasture below
where a mouse might burrow
towards its talons. Let me show
you something else: a cloud’s slow
progress, swaddling the snow
capped Cairngorms, which grow
as the rain falls back. Rimbaud
would have found both E and O
in such a prospect – the stark glow
of the peaks, wrapped in their indigo
grey shawls – and A in a crow
as it swithers to and fro
before setting down, with no
less grace than a noh
artiste, on a fencepost. So
the hand, finding a radio
station, lets the dial go.
The Gled
Watching a red kite carrying the weather’s
weight in its russet tail feathers, I’m minded
of the gled in Henryson’s fable, folding
itself out of the wind, while the field mouse
put there to symbolise what virtues we
might waste, struggles to swim against the current
of this world’s water, dragged down by the sinful
puddock – wallowing deeper while the waving
corn on the opposite bank, betokening
heaven, shines its unreachable yellow shine.
The gled’s our end, descending from an emptied
sky to snatch the field mouse and the puddock
up – no doubt the poet had seen hawks hunting
often enough to know their deadly meaning
for such small creatures, scurrying from furrow
to furrow, always half-aware of something
stirring in the trackless openness beyond
the ploughed land; hovering in the air just out
of eye’s reach, terrifyingly intimate;
carrying the climate on its russet tail.
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Stewart Sanderson is a poet from Glasgow, recently translated to the West Midlands. His work has been recognised by a number of prizes, including an Eric Gregory Award, as well as Robert Louis Stevenson and Jessie Kesson Fellowships. His most recent pamphlet is An Offering (Tapsalteerie, 2018)