View from Stac Polly, (Stac Pollaidh) (IP)

An afternoon of Scottish rain,
evening light on hills and loch,
a morning washed, and vibrant sky,
a craggy fortress towering high,
overlooking loch and moor; –

up, up above the glittering lake,
climbing, circling round, to see
quite suddenly a view so strange –
[unlike the Cairngorms’ massive bulk,
or peaks and glens of Nevis range]
a ginger ‘sea’, spreads northwards out,
far down below, beneath our feet,
with pools of azure blue, in plateau
vast of humpy clumps, and bumps,
and here and there dark ‘burnt-loaf’ lumps, –
scattered mountains, each an ‘island’
– not in the nearby sky-blue sea –
but on this Assynt moor extensive.

Among th’eroded rocks, I stand,
fixing scenes to camera and mind:
a moment, gratitude, to treasure,
a ‘find’ enhanced by weather kind,
a personal, peculiar pleasure.