From Here to the Sea
Hugh McMillan
I have flushed out animals today:
a young deer bolting across
wet grass near Kilmaurs
and a hawk at Garelochhead
arrowing between trees.
Maybe it was the train did it,
but I think it was me nosing north
like the hawk on a wing and a prayer,
like the deer on a body swerve.
Sunlight is strung through cloud
and ahead the weather is bending
like a bar round mountains.
This is as ever a journey
from the central belt of my life
to the high hills of my imagination,
hard to describe:
sometimes I run beside the train,
sometimes the dead live,
their conversation
frozen in the silver air.
The country is alive too-
the rocks breathe and even
the rain is saying something
dripping in a romance language
down wet windows.
Oh a heron! Sheet music
beating from here to the sea.