if you find yourself
taking the
side road
up the
stony track
you will
surely lose yourself
among leafy
secrecies
wandering
thin brick paths
where
you’re sure
to meet
yourself
coming back
stepping on
stones
out to the
small isles
floating
upon the little ponds
where the
little sailboats
once tacked
their hanky-
sails about
wish, Hölderlin's Isle, photograph Alistair Peebles, 2010
where the
pines’
freshly
swept needles
pattern an
arc
where the
last shaft
of sun
falls through
camouflage
leafage
where the
gnomon
divides the
hour
fathering
shadow
where
time's vertical
is drawn
toward
an autumnal
thought
Hugh MacDiarmid wryly refers to Stonypath as being down ‘the side road to Dunsyre’ in an interview; the
pine needles around ‘wood-wind song’ were swept into neat circles around the trunks.
The first photograph is by Alistair Peebles, 2010; the poem reads, 'the beginning / and end / is water', and is hanging beside the source at Stonypath.
These poems were first published in Question Your Teaspoons (Calderwood Press).
