Seeking Arran

Clyde’s coast
Brunei’s shore
To walk them
Again or anon
Though one exists
Only in the heart’s imagination
The other only in memory’s aging eye.

To walk in block booted feet
Arran’s sea belt macadam,
View with my own white orbs
Lockranza’s iron tower,
Staring black socketed toward
The bay, girt round with her
Sward of rain damp green.

And on beyond to the
Twelve Apostle’s solid
White domesticity, deep set glaze
Catching the sun setting
Toward Erin’s Isle
Below the green gray curve
Of Kyntyre’s horizon line.

And on again to where the soughing
Breeze from the Firth echoes
In the arched confines of the cavern
Where lay the Celtic hero
Bruce’s royal head an exile,
As are those who dream of
Thick salt air flowing warm as mother milk
O’er frothy foam on sand beneath
Ecstatically arched palms sighing
In the heat of the tropic night.

And above the cold washed shingle,
Climbing up and up into the highlands
Of this little Scotland, following
A clattering, dun scree track
To where the rills over goarse and heather
Collect in a cold clear lake
Among the mounds of weathered gray rock hills.

And to the end, in the south
Among the scrub pines where
The red deer run,
When exhausted feet find wool warm
Comfort beneath an inn’s eiderdown.

How my feet do fly
Cold and wet, or warm and dry
In my mind’s far seeing eye
Along an island’s shore,
Pan’s land of nevermore,
Arran’s ilse east of Erin
Seeking Eve and love
Among sea palms and singing pines.

Wendell Geary Jr. – February 15, 2001 - III