The cycles of creation carry on concurrently. Inspiration, exploration, contemplation and celebration of the world, the idea, the poem and the performance swirl around the mind and take their turn upon the stage. This summer I went to the Isle of Skye with my brother Jonathan to explore as much of the Cuillin ridge as the limits of our bodies, the terrain and the weather would allow. And I came back with three films of mountain poetry, the seed of a new poem and a deeper appreciation of my kinship with the earth.
And a few midge bites. I will share which of these I can with you.
And a few midge bites. I will share which of these I can with you.
The Book of Skye
1. Forefathers
In the beginning...
The earth was without form,
And void; and darkness
Was on the face of the deep.
And we emerged, struggling,
An archetypal people,
With a name and a land
And a story.
My brother and I, blessed,
Cursed sons gave up wrestling
Angels to retrace steps in time,
Back into brutal Genesis.
I gave up my birthright
For a cup of tea,
A bowl of muesli,
And a bacon sarnie
And we went back
Into the land of our end
And our beginning:
Glenbrittle,
Which means
The valley
Where we'll all end
Up shattered.
We were led
By the spirit of
The Lord of,
Into the Cuillin,
The black ridge,
A dark shroud from the South,
A golden crown from the East,
A fortress, fast, from the North,
And who knows,
God knows,
From the West.
We would know.
So we gave up the gift
Of settlement for striving,
And striding up
Past the dangling falls,
A streak of light
Against the dark rock,
My brother, blessed,
Blessed the fountain
For always finding a way.
2. Inaccessible
And it came to pass
That all language, scattered,
Became one,
And the voice of scree,
Of boulder and fall,
Of heather and raven,
Rock, river, sea and sky
Were one
In the place that is called Inaccessible,
Pinnacle of our surging to challenge,
God of our reaching for heaven ecstatic,
Tower of our grasping and clinging to rock,
Astonishing place
Of fingers and toes,
Where we astonish ourselves
With some kind of mastery,
Kin to the old patriarchs,
Who must have lost their minds
To be so surrounded by sky:
The infinite and overhanging on one side,
Further and steeper on the other.
One half blasted with sunlight,
The other dripping in shadow,
We stand together,
Grinning at the top.
We suck it in
And move on,
Dangle and descend
From the trusted chain:
Mastery is begotten of union,
And union is begotten of strife,
And strife is begotten of loss,
And loss begotten of possession.
And possession is begotten of blessing,
And blessing begotten of blessing,
And blessing is begotten of God knows,
In the beginning and in the end.
And the boulderfield end of the day
Tumbles down from the castellations
By degrees, from death to broken neck,
To broken limbs, to twisted ankle,
To wounded pride,
To slip and slide,
To stagger, to fairly safe
By dusk.
3. Adrift
In a beached ark called Coruisk,
Which is to say, Emptiness,
Where white birds pick at the flotsam
Of a plastic civilisation,
And no one lives,
And nothing survives,
But two battered brothers,
Two escaped parents
And two bewildered daughters,
Pasta and pesto,
And cups of tea, two by two,
We live, we survive.
A dram or two and we share
Our stories of how society
Got it wrong. Deeply.
Overwhelmingly.
Sleepingbagged in galley bunks,
Boxed in our cubit of refuge,
For those who go
To the wild places
For challenge, adventure,
Good companionship
And, unspoken, to find
What it is to be wild,
The deluge is upon us:
The cabin sings
With humming lanyards,
Shutters percussing,
And rain is begotten of cloud,
And cloud is begotten of sea,
And sea is begotten of river,
And river begotten of rain.
And our minds circle thus,
And go back to beginnings,
Before the circling, flaming sword,
And we wake before we are given rest.
4. In Creation
In a primal place,
Streams in spate
And a cloud embrace,
And a landscape scraped,
Scoured until shining,
Metallic in the rain,
Every surface shaping
And shaped by the flow.
Curved in on itself,
Walled in, magnificent,
Like Paradise, but dark.
Even the light is dark.
And we are hollow,
Stripped naked,
The image of God
In His loneliness:
No beasts of the field,
No fruits of the earth,
No lights in the firmament,
A place just emerging from ice.
The waters have not
Yet been gathered,
Nor separated from earth.
Nor we from either.
That of my brother which climbs rock
Is rock. Scaling waterfall
I am in waterfall, through waterfall,
Waterfall is in me, through me.
Scree overcomes
As much as is overcome.
We are elemental light,
Beauty and Power,
Tea and chocolate,
Grin and grimace,
Fear, sheer joy, and more fear,
Good fear.
And laughter in the sky.
And it came to pass
That even the heaven and the earth
We're mingled and we looked upon
Our tumbling world and said
We are lost.
And we don't know the way
Back or forward.
We simply remember a beginning.
And we are darkness,
And we are light,
And we are blessed
To always find a way.
Michael James Parker, summer 2012
1. Forefathers
In the beginning...
The earth was without form,
And void; and darkness
Was on the face of the deep.
And we emerged, struggling,
An archetypal people,
With a name and a land
And a story.
My brother and I, blessed,
Cursed sons gave up wrestling
Angels to retrace steps in time,
Back into brutal Genesis.
I gave up my birthright
For a cup of tea,
A bowl of muesli,
And a bacon sarnie
And we went back
Into the land of our end
And our beginning:
Glenbrittle,
Which means
The valley
Where we'll all end
Up shattered.
We were led
By the spirit of
The Lord of,
Into the Cuillin,
The black ridge,
A dark shroud from the South,
A golden crown from the East,
A fortress, fast, from the North,
And who knows,
God knows,
From the West.
We would know.
So we gave up the gift
Of settlement for striving,
And striding up
Past the dangling falls,
A streak of light
Against the dark rock,
My brother, blessed,
Blessed the fountain
For always finding a way.
2. Inaccessible
And it came to pass
That all language, scattered,
Became one,
And the voice of scree,
Of boulder and fall,
Of heather and raven,
Rock, river, sea and sky
Were one
In the place that is called Inaccessible,
Pinnacle of our surging to challenge,
God of our reaching for heaven ecstatic,
Tower of our grasping and clinging to rock,
Astonishing place
Of fingers and toes,
Where we astonish ourselves
With some kind of mastery,
Kin to the old patriarchs,
Who must have lost their minds
To be so surrounded by sky:
The infinite and overhanging on one side,
Further and steeper on the other.
One half blasted with sunlight,
The other dripping in shadow,
We stand together,
Grinning at the top.
We suck it in
And move on,
Dangle and descend
From the trusted chain:
Mastery is begotten of union,
And union is begotten of strife,
And strife is begotten of loss,
And loss begotten of possession.
And possession is begotten of blessing,
And blessing begotten of blessing,
And blessing is begotten of God knows,
In the beginning and in the end.
And the boulderfield end of the day
Tumbles down from the castellations
By degrees, from death to broken neck,
To broken limbs, to twisted ankle,
To wounded pride,
To slip and slide,
To stagger, to fairly safe
By dusk.
3. Adrift
In a beached ark called Coruisk,
Which is to say, Emptiness,
Where white birds pick at the flotsam
Of a plastic civilisation,
And no one lives,
And nothing survives,
But two battered brothers,
Two escaped parents
And two bewildered daughters,
Pasta and pesto,
And cups of tea, two by two,
We live, we survive.
A dram or two and we share
Our stories of how society
Got it wrong. Deeply.
Overwhelmingly.
Sleepingbagged in galley bunks,
Boxed in our cubit of refuge,
For those who go
To the wild places
For challenge, adventure,
Good companionship
And, unspoken, to find
What it is to be wild,
The deluge is upon us:
The cabin sings
With humming lanyards,
Shutters percussing,
And rain is begotten of cloud,
And cloud is begotten of sea,
And sea is begotten of river,
And river begotten of rain.
And our minds circle thus,
And go back to beginnings,
Before the circling, flaming sword,
And we wake before we are given rest.
4. In Creation
In a primal place,
Streams in spate
And a cloud embrace,
And a landscape scraped,
Scoured until shining,
Metallic in the rain,
Every surface shaping
And shaped by the flow.
Curved in on itself,
Walled in, magnificent,
Like Paradise, but dark.
Even the light is dark.
And we are hollow,
Stripped naked,
The image of God
In His loneliness:
No beasts of the field,
No fruits of the earth,
No lights in the firmament,
A place just emerging from ice.
The waters have not
Yet been gathered,
Nor separated from earth.
Nor we from either.
That of my brother which climbs rock
Is rock. Scaling waterfall
I am in waterfall, through waterfall,
Waterfall is in me, through me.
Scree overcomes
As much as is overcome.
We are elemental light,
Beauty and Power,
Tea and chocolate,
Grin and grimace,
Fear, sheer joy, and more fear,
Good fear.
And laughter in the sky.
And it came to pass
That even the heaven and the earth
We're mingled and we looked upon
Our tumbling world and said
We are lost.
And we don't know the way
Back or forward.
We simply remember a beginning.
And we are darkness,
And we are light,
And we are blessed
To always find a way.
Michael James Parker, summer 2012
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