Kjell Espmark reaches ninety

by Robin Fulton Macpherson

His poems can seem a long way off,
reading remote hills like small print.
and a long way back, listening to
words fresher than Genesis breathed
from lips centuries gone – as when

we look south from Achavanich
today, four thousand years ago,
hearing those ruffled hazels
just as Ava must have heard them
while catching sight of the distant
pyramid outline of Morven.