ON THE BARRENS

Ghost-grey, tipsy in its V,

the harrier hovers, wavers,

glides, an ever-adjusting

motion sensor scanning the crowberry-

cranberry-blueberry-goowiddy-

bottlebrush-tuckamore

tapestry below, then, angling sharply,

sideslips out of sight

and into someone’s near

or sudden death.

I lower the binoculars,

craving the dwarf subspecies

of myself, like the sideways birch

crawling the outcrop, or the fir

whose one-way branches obey the wind,

even when, as now,

it’s gone off somewhere to replenish huff.

To be fit

means to be in shape but also

to be shaped by the weather’s

rough injustice. Means

grow tensile, grow vines

to hyphenate with neighbours

and resist. Means thin

the spirit, or,

if that isn’t spirit, then

whatever it is that’s whet

and spare and whisky-fierce within.