Time has Slept Soundly in this Archipelago
Time has slept soundly in this archipelago
her soft couch hollowing the hills of Hoy.
A corrie for a pillow and here, two glacial sheets
their edges scalloped, a watch-stone at their feet.
What did time dream of during that long sleep?
Did she relive, her muscles twitching, the frozen flow
that once scabbed Orkney from the South-East?
Or did she envision, snuggling close, a throw of greens
with warming hearths and well-fenced fields, ploughs
cutting furrows for the alchemist’s seeds?
What did time dream of during that long sleep?
Did she bend her mind beyond earth’s shadow
to drum to the beat of far-flung galaxies?
Or did she gather stars within easier reach,
– their merry dimples and untold sorrows –
to scatter them idly across our valleys?
Time once slept soundly here, long ago,
before we harried her away.
Now, if she ever reappears, she does so
to the wayward few and only briefly
those on parole from calloused clock-hands
and their iron tempo.