May Song

May Song

As I rode over the dunes today
I heard the peewits cry,
Their nests were in the whistling sedge
That clothed the moor from edge to edge
And streamed to meet the sky.

The sun as on the world to-day
As I went riding by,
All silken was the rippling lea –
Satin and lace the tumbling sea
Under a ribboned sky.

We raced across the sands today,
My chestnut mare and I;
And flying hoofs and singing sea
And all the glad wind’s minstrelsy
Chimed to the lark loud sky.

As back I strayed when eve was come,
With sunset in the sky,
I saw the sands all gold and grey –
Opal and pearl the swinging bay,
And I heard the peewits cry.

D.M.P. ©

Lost Land

Lost Land

This hill was my youth……………..
From here I would watch the wide hill-rimmed
Range of my darling world, set sturdy and deep
In a pattern of worlds not realised: here only the sweep
Of showers down sunlit valleys dimmed
The morning lustre, or shadowed the shining flowers.
Here lambs bloomed white
On green hill-sides, and all the old
Magic of quiet, the sleep
Of sun-soaked spinning hours,
Blessed the long day; Blessed with warm gold
The long bright day of dreams, before the encroaching night
Let in the dark………let in the dark and cold.

I am the hill’s……………….
Oh! Many centuries deep the tie,
Rooted in hard-wrung peace, in difficult tears, love inarticulate:
Rooted too deep to die
Though a way of life has passed, though aliens lie
Where once I lay, watching the hills and the far, dispassionate
Wide arch the sky.

Seek not to fly from grief……………….
From the hard discipline of love and passion and pain
Beauty will come.  Love is not less
Though dreams be forever unspoken,
But gathers in depth and vision and tenderness.
And after relinquishment, and loss, and dreams – or hearts – that are broken,
Beauty, the ever-living, the ever-changing, will come again.

D.M.P.

Galloway Song

Galloway Song

 Here on the high moors

That look to the sea,

Where purple vintage spills

For the roving bee,

A heart may discover again

Serenity.

 

Here on the wild moss

Under the hill

White lilies shine and float

On water still,

And blue cloud-shadows weave

At the wind’s will.

 

Here in the deep woods

Where, yesterday,

Great flooding spring-tide pools

Of bluebells lay,

Green ferns are cool, and breathe

Tranquillity.

 

Here on the green holms

Where the swallow skims

Sunshine and shadow flicker

On silver streams;

And summer and winter pass

In a shimmer of dreams.

 

D.M.P. ©

A Galloway Burn in June

A Galloway Burn in June

gall burn

Brown burn water dropping
Between the grey stones,
The lapse and the murmur,
The bright overtones
Of cuckoo and curlew
And faraway trill
Of a lark; great blue shadows
Stride over the hill:
Breeze and bird-call are blended
With murmur of bees;
Sun and wind stroke the grasses
And finger the trees.
Is it sunlight or greenlight?
This shimmer of leaves;
Is it seeing or dreaming,
The dapple that weaves
Across the brown water
That murmurs and spills
Through the grey stones forever
Among the green hill?

D.M.P. ©

A Galloway Burn in June

 

 

Brown burn water dropping

Between the grey stones,

The lapse and the murmur,

The bright overtones

Of cuckoo and curlew

And faraway trill

Of a lark; great blue shadows

Stride over the hill:

Breeze and bird-call are blended

With murmur of bees;

Sun and wind stroke the grasses

And finger the trees.

Is it sunlight or greenlight?

This shimmer of leaves;

Is it seeing or dreaming,

The dapple that weaves

Across the brown water

That murmurs and spills

Through the grey stones forever

Among the green hill?

 

D.M.P. ©

At Portmary

At Portmary

Lassie wi’ the lang e’en
What garred ye gang sic a gait?
To come fleein’ wild ower the cauld moss
To sic an ill fate?

What garred ye lippen on bounty
Frae yon black-hertit queen?
Peety there’s nane in yon prood face
Wi’ its cauld gled’s e’en.

O lassie wi’ the lang e’en,
Better if Solway’s sea
Had row’d ye ower and happit ye bein
To a’ eternity.

D.M.P. ©

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