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