Glen Rosa

For Joan

by Stuart A Paterson

Here the world tunnels under our skins,
floods through our eyes at the blue pool,
lies lazily in wait like that adder
looped across our path, casts blue spools
of breathless summer down from Goat Fell.

Enclosed by the arms of Beinn Tarsuinn
& Beinn Nuis, we curve ourselves slowly
upward to where the spine of time itself
seems to burst through from the very start
of it when we were little more than cells.

Nobody here but us, the pools, the hills,
low sky wrapped tight around our heads,
hard earth beneath our feet which gather pace
at seeing a glimpse of heaven on the rise,
a spark of what's to come in sunstruck eyes.