Seeing in the New Year

 

At Hogmanay we walked six miles,

down through Elvanfoot to Abington, past

the swollen stream, a dead sheep drinking

its own reflection.

 

Snow and rabbits everywhere, scut-tails bobbing

far into the distance—a crofter’s cottage, abandoned

in the fifties—yellow linoleum a reminder,

our time will become archaeology.

 

At midnight we struggled up,

through Crawfordjohn, Leadhills long since lost

to darkness. In the village

the Curfew Bell would be ringing

in the new year. We were too far

to hear its metallic tongue calling.

 

The Lowthers stood above us—

Drake Law, Dun Law, Broad Law.

Snowy flanks of Mild Scar sliced the valley.

An arctic hare sat up, shook snowflakes

from pale ear-shafts. I fell, crunching snow

into my own hollows.

 

Snow fell silently into itself.

Looking back, we’d already vanished,

lost in the white ash of the old year.

 

 

Suicide Hill

 

The retired coalminer came to our cottage,

eyes dark pits, told us

about the sparrow hawks shot on the moor,

protected eggs smashed in the nest.

 

We knew about the gamekeepers, saw them

each night, sitting in lay-bys

with shotguns, flashlights, waiting

for life to scuttle past—arctic hares caught

 

between seasons, pale-scut rabbits

eyes round moons, a wildcat stalking shadows—

these moors old breeding grounds

for flame-feathered grouse,

 

yet the Southern Upland Way beckons,

opening secret passages between hills

for us to lay first treads.

It is suicide to come here—

 

to lay rare eggs in nests of clanging heather bells.

They know this at the unconsecrated burial ground

at the foot of Green Lowther—suicides

brought from the valley on carts

 

to lie staring at swirling skies.

But this is where they come to live and die,

to hills as bare as eggs, crowning

the top of the world.

 

 

Top of the World

 

We bought a cake to celebrate your homecoming—

a white rocking horse with yellow mane and tail,

a blue rocker. You cried all the way

from Glasgow and up the Mennock Pass,

over-heating in baby clothing—wool cardigan,

knitted bonnet, bootees from another lamb

born somewhere along the Southern Upland Way.

 

Lambs everywhere back in April—latched

tight onto mothers, sucking in the Lowthers,

the milk of heather bells and fool’s gold

found on the silt floors of stream paths.

 

Summer when we drove you home—

lambs grown plump,

though deep bleats still stirred dry teats.

 

We said goodbye to the little girl in ITU,

gave a card to her mother which read:

Good luck from one little lamb to another.

 

When we arrived home

villagers threw silver coins into your crib, marveling

at how newborn you still looked.