Fresh Snow

Crisp under foot, its surface
crumpling beneath a worn yellow boot
to give out a sound that could be
confused with the noise an egg makes -
hard-boiled - when tapped gently
on a corduroy-clad knee, resting
near the summit of Buchaille Etive Mhor
on a cloud-free day when we were
sixteen maybe - or seventeen
at a push - with few concerns
(none of them serious) and too little
imagination to worry in any way
beneath that pristine sky, azure,
unbroken as far as the eye could see
beyond Ben Nevis to the east,
The Cullens on Skye to the west
and the whole Great Glen running north
to south where home lay, distant and safe.

I wrote the lines above after reading this (in search of inspiration I suppose). I have a lot to lear about poetry.

DON PATERSON

Sliding on Loch Ogil

Remember, brother soul, that day spent cleaving
nothing from nothing, like a thrown knife?
Then there was no arriving and no leaving,
just a dream of the disintricated life —
crucified and free, the still man moving,
the balancing his work, the wind his wife.

.