Mountain Rescue
How do we pull ourselves back
when we’ve nothing to hold on to?
Find a way clear
or stay? Wait.
Song will arrive again
from scrub, from burn, from leaf.
We feel the weight of hope,
are shocked to life by the rawness of spring-water.
By moonlight on stepping stones
beneath the wildness that rushes,
under rotting bridges,
beyond the rusting fences and crumbling walls,
that stand against beating wind, cracking ice
and our dry, splintering sun. Be mindful
of where others have fallen, where snarls
of heather snag ankles, where mud connives
to bind us static. Thorns of gorse pierce
the air and the skitter of scree threatens.
Hold warmth, stick by stick,
in the fires we huddle round,
fend off shadows that pull
away, long behind us.
Lapsed parachutist Laura Fyfe suffers from a chronic low boredom threshold which she mitigates by supporting other writers and by playing with words. She lives in river deep, mountain high Stirlingshire and is the Stirling Makar.