How quickly the days slide away

Still thinking on our recent trip up North - so here's Norman MacCaig, as taken from the pictured 2010 collection:


By the Three Lochans

I sit, trying to look like a heather bush -
hoping to see
a mewing buzzard or a vole or a dragonfly.
How quickly the days slide away
into where they came from.

It's hard to change anything.
I look into my hand to see
if there's an idea there
giving birth to a strenuous baby.
Only a life-line that's not long enough.

An obstinate old rowan tree
stands on a tiny island.
So many storms, yet there it is
with only a few berries, each determined
to be the last one to drop into the water.

And the light floods down
revealing mountains and flowers
and so many shadows. If only
a merlin would hurtle past, that atom
of speed, that molecule of life.

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Norman MacCaig (1910 – 1996)

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