Touching the past

Ring of Brodgar
Originally uploaded by goforchris

One of the most powerful impressions left by a recent trip to Orkney is the link with a distant past - more distant even than the building of the Pyramids.

Come with me, come to where
the stone circle reaches
to the sunset sky;
come over the cropped grass
where the wind bites at your face.
Come with me to the mound where
the dead are piled
in rickled heaps
of bones picked clean as air
buried with the sky’s claws
their spirits long-flown
beyond the sea-eagles’ soar.
Come with me, oh come.
The anxious birds still call and wheel above
the long-cold hearths,
the sea still seethes and foams below
the cliffs of plated stone.
The past is close – see:
touch it, and know.

©C.M.M.