from The Poetry Challenge Quiraing

Quiraing

for Pam and Simon

Trotternish escarpment
still slow landslip
to the sea.

We came this way
low and long
along the Trotternish ridge
that towered beside us
and the steep fall to Raasay Sound below.

We walked that rough track
one late October
where we fought the wind
wrestled the cold, breathless
with thick clotted cloud
scouring the sky
picking the bones
of the exposed land.

We hardly spoke
in that roar and twist of the air
that tore into us,
picked us clean.

I waited at The Saddle
where the wind rose to meet me from both sides
wind bitten, hands numbed
as I clutched at the hard neck of rock
like riding the rock fall deep,
plunging long into the sea far below.

And watched the distant Torridon Hills
glowing red in the growing dusk
beyond the far Inner Sound.

© David Loffman



20 January 2007