Literature Comp

We have a winner, all entries were judged anonymously and here are the results....

Winner

Connection- Morag Forsyth

The icy taste of winter air,
The smell of new-born snow,
Drawn onwards by the promise
Of the open road.

My eyes seek the upwards sweep
Of distant mountain tops,
Towering giants clothed in
Snowy counterpane.

Immersed in the wind
Sighing through tangled grasses,
Pounded by the roar
Of water over ancient rocks.

Such solitude and freedom,
Such exhilaration and joy,
This connection with the land,
This sense of place.


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Honourable Mention

Leavings (a collection of poems) – by Jim Turner



Passing Loch Eriboll

A wind frets at the shore
Whilst above, Cranstackie draws a cold veil
Over grey shoulders of crumbling rock.
On the water white horses roar
A brief, gleaming defiance as their tails
Streak, then fade in the dark shadows of the Loch.

We pedal, pushed on now by a wind
Which, swithering over the great angle
Of Sutherland wheels north and tugs, teasing
Shreds of cloud that clutch and cleave to the hill.

They rip off. They sail, alone, past a bay,
Past the red rocks where we bask and watch spray
Peel from sunlit waves; they pass out to sea
Where horses still rise, fade and cease to be.

Looking at Rylstone Edge

And there, just above, hang slabs of grit.
In the evening light they are browning;
Warming to that toasty shade acquired by
Drying peat they curl the crest of the moor,
Furrow that brow which, with seeming malice,
Glowers at the clouds that stack to the West.

There are the climbers, there. Tiny aren’t they;
Little specks awash in a sea of moor.
Why do they stand so curiously still?
Perhaps, with energy expended and
Their day ending amidst the prickling heat,
The frantic flittings of storm flies; perhaps,
In this moment, they feel a kind of significance,
Laughable though it may be compared
With the massed days, seasons, years that this moor
Has witnessed over the course of its slow,
Steady, crumbling collapse toward the sea.

Perhaps they hope, in a self-conscious state,
To imbue with importance this moment
(Suspended, as they are, on the cresting
Wave of Rylstone Edge) so that it might slap
Like salt spray from a Sutherland beach
Smack into the future heat of a Melbourne street;
Smack into a grey day in Lancashire.



Act of Faith, Creag Meagaidh

Six inches of ice upon the Lochan
A Coire Ardair. Tentative I slide
Out, only so far as others have been
With my faith that lies inside of the tried
And tested. Staring past my boots, searching
For flaws in the ice I see straight through
Fifteen, maybe twenty feet, a gaze sounding
Depths that shouldn’t be seen. Looking up, blue
Skies peek through the Window and the three posts
Loom solemnly into the cloud. I know
Now what it is to walk on water. Lost
On a horizontal plane the world grows
Distant. From the bank comes friendly chatter
Where feet rest upon more solid matter.

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