Bavelaw
I. early January
the thaw had not reached Bavelaw yet
the castle uncaught
hidden still in silence
the deer at the trees’ edge
alert, watches me
I walk away
the Red Moss inaccessible
ice and sleep weigh down its paths
who dares disturb
the frost’s dominion?
I walk away
an empty field’s perimeter
makeshift shelters of branch and board
in one an overturned chair
and spent shotgun cartridges
lying in drifts like the snow
the day now feels much colder
the day now feels so much darker
and I walk away
II. mid-March
an invitation to linger
among the mounds and grasses
the sun breaks the clouds
breaks bread with me
as birds punctuate
the Red Moss
the silence here
is not no sound
no gate
a breaking branch
a branch broken
in a state of breaking
no gate
Scots pine stretching out
birches filamenting upwards
lichen mantling brittle trunks
the treeness of it all
this wildness
a place of forgetting
on the hill to the castle
by the path to the hide
right-angles of grace
look up—
the rain approaches
look up—
a hawk’s hazelling contrails
look up—
the rain is here