After the birthing hut with its bedding,
herder’s carpet, close-cropped grass,
and though we’ve an eye out
for markers, we’re missing signs of life
except a shriek – a skidding jay –
aptly named in Gaelic
screamer in the woods.
Sprite of the hotter climate,
all striped flash and beak, it skews,
whisks into the prickly oak.
Must have a mate, we hear them yacking
sarcastic, solipsistic – an expletive –
one cracks a joke, the other quips,
timing their retorts.
We skirt their wood. A silence
spreads. The mountain’s ripped:
we’re staring at its wound,
an old landslide. Rocks occupy
what was a village
emptied of sound, rocks
mute as bones.
A fractured floor, the broken
open, fallen forward
attic bricabrac of mountain,
dust of acres slumped against survivors
of torn trees, smashed terraces, the cut
zig of an old stone track,
zag buried under tons.
Blue dash. Black/white and pink
signals sent in rapid jerks,
both jays’ dispatches are abrupt: look up,
up, up, not at the burial ground:
forget your alpine plants, your poor head
for heights: this is a vertical experience,
ascend the chimney of cracked light.