The TV screens of all Europe show
severe low pressure south of Iceland
drenching Caithness drenching Sutherland
again. Water will be relentless
down smooth backs of family gravestones
and their lettered fronts not often read.
By the River Helmsdale, John Fulton,
father, Margaret Macpherson, mother,
their stones, as stones go, still unweathered.
By the River Thurso, grandfather
Murdo Macpherson, Elizabeth
Macdonald his wife, and his father
Murdoch, Free Presbyterian and
tailor, Joanna Shearer his wife.
By the River Helmsdale, at Kinbrace,
his father, William, Catherine Fraser
his wife, he who was "keeper of the grass"
at Griamochory, reached 89.
And then his father Alexander
who wed Ann Sutherland, 1801.
And the harsh sides of Morven sodden
again with more rain than they can hold:
I had teenage plans to reach the top
and get home perhaps in the one day.
What stopped me was not the gradient
but the unbearable loneliness
that would crowd in on me from the moors
and would stare at me and not say one word.