Voyage Out

Leafing through an old book
I stopped stunned to see
Stac Lee looming up at me.
A physical shock on the page
The great toothed doorkeeper
To the terrors of Boreray.

Dim resonance from an earlier time
St. Kilda called out; summoned me
So I went there with my mind.
Over the Hebrides' downed kite
Memory spun out on spindrift
Rolling with the ocean
Till I saw four islands rise.

Four islands more like cathedrals.
In every rock a gargoyle
Every cliff a buttress
Flung head on to the screaming storm.
Waves higher than homes.
The sky an astonishment of birds
Bellies flashing; wings dipped
To the Sun's setting orb.

Our kind lived here too.
Lived and died with a courage
To make complacency blush.
But they are gone now.
Brushed aside on the tide
Of the twentieth century
To find their graves on the mainland
Morvern; this other alien earth.

Close your eyes this one last time
And you shall see them.
Faces streaming salt spray and tears.
Oars turning boats no more
Than silver threads on an inky swell.
The four mile run for home
Under a sky swept clean of clouds.
Loved ones huddled at the shoreline
Palms oustretched at the windward edge.
Infinity. Hirta's children
Bringing on the harvest
In the land of the Solan Geese.