We’ve travelled down from the tip of Caithness from Scrabster and overnighted at Helmsdale in Sutherland (a town torally swaddled in the aroma of gorse this tome of year.) then was the long drive day, working our way southwards. There was snow flurries coming through the Cairngorms; thendash told us it was 4C. By the time we lunched in Pitlochrie it was sunny and a balmy 14C. Pitlochrie is a spa town, a kind of Gaelic Harrogate, all weighty stone buildings, purveyos of old-fashioned sweets in jars- violet creams, Berwick cockles, Irn-Bru balls. Also an especially short, shortbread in very generous rounds. On this trip I have had haggis, Orkney ice cream, shortbread. I am going off to seek the experience of square sausage in Glasgow shortly.
But first poetry practice. We are just outside Glasgow, just past the Trossachs, but close to the base of Loch Lomond, which my travel companion tells me is the gateway to the Highlands. We are staying with her 83 year old widowed father in the house he built with his own hands. An engineer by trade he also has mad mandolins. I woke to his own music practice. He was also an avid hillwalker back in the day.
Hillwalker’s Lament
When old and sight faded,
No longer seeing hazards, crags and skree,
Unable to meet the heady heights anymore,
In morning time a tune emits
From the whistle’s lips-
A lilt, a lament, a memory
When sturdy legs reeled around dance floors
With his bonnie lassie in his arms.
But she has gone before.
The high and low notes
Tenderly render the spread and breadth
Of a life knowing love
Being loved in return
In a tune on a sunny
Scotland Saturday morning.
Copyright 2019 Bee Smith
