This poem was inspired by scots poems and is about inspiration that can be found in nature. I saw a visitor's book from Corrour Bothy from the 1930s which was the catalyst of inspiration for this poem.

Some translations for non-scots understanding readers:
Bothy - small remote shelter for hillwalkers
Braw - if something is braw it is good
Bonnie - pretty
Baltic - freezing
Dreich - dull
Drookit - drenches
Burn - small river
Loch - lake



In the middle of nowhere

lies a Bothy.

With a baltic breeze

and slat roof that looks lonely.



The bothy is filled with sounds,

because inside of it a heart pounds.

Every day was cold and dreich,

but the bothy was alive

and filled with heat.



A visitors book

gives the eyes a view.

Filled with rhymes and sketches,

sight given to eyes

through veins of etches.



Alone with nothing but the hills alive,

here mechanics and merchants

make art and poems

as life becomes much less urgent.



Derelict seclusion,

where only the hills speak,

whispering to the visitors

‘This line you should tweak.’



They sit and blether,

even when alone,

the visitors writing

whatever words the lochs are whining.



Even when drookit the people sit

listening to the bothy breathe.

The burn’s banter,

the rivers mutter, and mountains sneeze.



Braw, bonnie, perfection

inspires the visitors to keep sketching.

Until that book is filled

and the visitors leave

somehow with eyes more open

and somehow with a mind more skilled.