Staffa
One basalt column to take the weight of a whole island; it is an unbalanced stage, dismal perch for puffins.
At first that’s all I see: the lonely stave, black, insupportably thin. Vision has diminished to a narrow, parallax view.
It is my fault, this part-sight, brought on by melancholy. I look again, and the island accordion has unfurled, hex upon hexagonal, a million
green-water way stones. Foam breaks its fall upon graphic strokes – the giant’s concertina frozen mid-play. I, too, am a stopped note
standing stock-still, amazed.
By Jane McKie
from Morocco Rococo (Blaenau Ffestiniog: Cinnamon Press, 2007)
Poem supplied courtesy of the Scottish Poetry Library |