My soul has taken flight
With the skylarks
Daydreaming upon the summit of Dun I
Angel voices glissanding Jacob’s ladder
Wrenching heart and body heavenwards
With the fulmars
Gyring below the Balmacqueen cliffs
For the joy of wild willed wheeling
And tracing rosaries above the waves
With the white-tailed eagle
Fleeing distractions of harrying gulls
To hang, shivering arms outstretched
And soar away over troubled Corryvreckan
With the great skua
Solitary suspicious shadow
Studied aggression laying claim to the Light of Stoer
Stabbed recognition in a flash of white
With the cormorant
Unfurled vulnerability perching in silent contemplation
Brooding darkly on the dawn
At its station under the Kessock Bridge
With the gannets
Each a bloodied phoenix, rising
To dive swifter than a thought
And pierce the clouds of unknowing reflected in the Firth of Lorn
Clare Bryden, August 2010
An experiment in a geo-located poem…