One bright, beady eye

Between Goldsitch and Eynhallow

Goldsitch Moss

I am not heathen but I respect and honour those wild northern gods and sometimes they feel very close…

  

One bright beady eye

 

Goldsitch Moss

Goldsitch Moss

Trembles with life,

A vibrant, simmering

Shimmer of sphagnum green.

Willow holds the edge

Of the frog-calling bog,

And birch climbs the crags,

Trailing a leaf-fall of

Delicate blades,                                 

While bilberry coyly flirts,

In purple,

Seducing visitors,

Into impromptu, lip-stained feasts.

Heather’s leaves and scented flowers

Belie the twisted determination,

Of rope-roots

Knotting rock to peat,

Tying the world together,

While Odin sits

On a grit-stone throne,

Watching the world go by

Through one bright, black, beady eye.

 

Midhowe Broch

Barely the beat of a raven’s wing,

To carry his will

From Memory to Thought,

From the Moss to the Sea.

Wet skins,

Take a breath,

Barely the draw of a longship’s oars

From Midhowe to Gurness,

The sail flaps,

Billows into blowing cheeks,

Straining,

Slowly,

Reluctantly,

The prow yields to the wind,

Lifting,

Storm-runner

Surge-cutter,

Foam-rider,

Wave-breaker.

The Sound swells, races

Lifts the longship, runs,

Drops, suddenly, into

The turquoise calm

Of a seal-wife bay

Behind the Holy Island.

 

Eynhallow Sound beyond the Broch of Gurness

Odin broods,

On his gritstone throne,

Watching the world,

Through one bright, black eye,

Pecking holes

In my heart.

But Freyr

Picks a path into my soul

And I am filled

By the hope of

A God made of wind and oak-leaves

And the Boar who bristles

In the thicket.

Orkney - raven - Huginn? Muninn?

Goldsitch Moss is a Staffordshire Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve near my home in Buxton

Eynhallow, and  Midhowe and Gurness Brochs (I haven't linked the brochs - start at Eynhallow and make the journey yourself) are in Orkney

Goldsitch Moss