National Poetry Day

National Poetry Day today --- theme this year is 'home' and like twelve months ago, I'm minded to choose a poem to reflect that theme ...

... as friends know, I'm a bit of a Norman MacCaig fan, and his poem Rich Day encapsulates Northern Scotland for me - might not be my physical home, but is probably my spiritual one:

RICH DAY

All day we fished
the loch clasped in the throat
of Canisp, that scrawny mountain,
and caught trout and
invisible treasures.

We walked home, ragged millionaires,
our minds jingling, our fingers
rustling the air.

And now, lying on the warm sand,
we see
the rim of the full moon
rest on a formal corrugation of water
at the feet of
a Britannia cloud:
sea and sky, one golden sovereign
that will never be spent.

---

I'll be staying near Canisp this New Year, and hoping to climb it ... this poem will surely be in my mind that day too.