Strathnaver Museum & Mackay Country Community Trust Moving Times & Museum Tales
‘The Vast Democracy of Life’
George Gunn
Dùthaich Mhic Aoidh Artist in Residence
Residency Poems
WELLINGTON
It is as if they wear red coats
the regiments of lodge-pole pines
which guard the banks of the River Borgie
because they are casualties now
twisted & broken in the rough artillery
of commercial forestry
as if Wellington has used them
to cover a hasty retreat
during the close run thing of Waterloo
I see as I walk battlefield smoke
beneath the castle of Bheinn Loaghall
I hear the screams of dying soldiers
& witness the commoditized blood
of timber & men soak into the peat
STRATHY
Venus huge & the lemon slice Moon
shine over Strathy
& low in the star slung sky
a silver trail across the sea
leads to Orkney then
I heard your gypsy laughter
saw your flashing eye
how it sought out the sea-road
back to your domain
so I hold you close beside me
until some time after
the Moon has gone
& the lemon slides from the salt rim
of the world into the September sea
BURNED
The last day of November
breaks yellow over Kildonan
the river is pale silver
like the colour of moonlight
everything is frosted snap-white
the hills wear dream-bonnets of mist
an occasional yellow light
like a fallen star
burns out of the mirk
the petrified birch trees
fold out the flame-paper of their bark
everything is a still as the Moon
once the people burned with life here
& were burned out of it by power
FACE
Time creeps across the floor
& climbs onto my face
“Why be alone” she says
softy beneath the slow air
I first heard in Balnakeil
the year everyone danced on the beach
& then lay down to listen to the tide
wash in & out between the centuries
& I feel the lost years of the tide-lines
draw up the map of who I am
on the new residue of sand
on the old shelf of rock
in the music ageless on the tongue
in the sound of the voice & the breath over the reeds
