Willy, or Wally, no deciphering the brogue, sang his late dad’s
verse outside the pub at the ferry pier, a Gallic clip we didn’t
glean the gist of but knew it proved the old man’s worth;
more than the strips of peat he used to flense from these hills
for everyone, for warmth. The weather’s weird; competing in
a single patch of sky I hadn’t seen so many takes on grey.
Bees bumble in the columbine and big dopey flies, recently
alarmed, dash their hopes against the fisher’s window (stickered
I’m a Real Scot, a Highlander) with the industry of the unemployed,
like the frugal time-lapse-stillness swallows frame the air with
at each treed hairpin on the switchback road around the bay.
Like the delay when a moment’s handed to the past, lending
improved vision, relief, but only for the back-directed glance.
Though this stop-motion sense might be the denatured stench
of naphtha and scorched metal that lances the brain from coal fumes
fuming out the cottage chimneys in this season’s featured damp.
Big Pig, our neighbour, outdated for the table, seems unaffected
as she nozzles sprouting garnishes the sheep pass up. This avails
in no way the photogenic farm on which she lives or its
environs. Our side of the camera I can’t recall with detail.