Notes from the Red Moss, 2 June 2023

stillness on the Red Moss
and flax almost adrift
in soft peat:
from lint holes, the memory
of sunbeam on sundew
and a thousand thousand blues above

jade mounds in bracken, stumps,
lighten
lighten but never
still, always different, ever
the same—
the sun on metal hexagons
on wooden walkways

looking to Bavelaw
in the lee of Hare Hill
I think of Stanley Roger Green
searching for that unfound cairn
while Threipmuir glitters

in scenes from a stillway
of pinecone and feather
can I be dappled
by light, by trees?
a trunk’s bend and
branch’s oscillation
a hoverfly lands on this nearly white page

[words and images from a morning walk through the Red Moss of Balerno nature reserve at the foot of the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, and then along the shore of Threipmuir Reservoir, Friday 2 June 2023.]