DON'T let the technical comment on the first line put you off this lovely atmospheric poem from Galloway, capturing its haunting landscapes.
It comes from Vivien Jones's new collection, Short of Breath (Cultured Llama Publishing). She lives on the north of the Solway Firth; her short stories and poetry have been widely published and broadcast.
BEYOND GATEHOUSE STATION
Grikes make clints - it's well known
in geology: a solution fissure will
dissolve limestone into flinty outcrops.
Yet the Clints of Dromore are granite,
free of their glacier some 18,000 years,
lichen rich, adder richer, with slabs
vertical enough to make poets
Of the climbers who name them -
Spare Rib; Comfy Chair; Quoth the Raven;
and the one no-one expects,
The Spanish Inquisition.
Mile on mile after rolling mile,
heath and heather, blanket bog,
acid soil attracts the alliterative,
acid soil, short of nutrients, makes
sundew clasp its deadly fingers,
makes butterwort stick to entrap;
insects dissolve, slip down their
velvet, vegetative gullets.
Patchwork sphagnum turns
to peat either side of our lifetimes,
slow as evolution.
grikes=fissures separating blocks or clints in limestone pavements
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