qarrtsiluni

To you it was a road, a thin red line
in an atlas, junctions to be noted,
their numbers told.

My knees were spread with maps,
my eyes were counting exits.
But my mind was charting

startling openings of sea,
mountain shoulders shrugging off
great clouds of white, silvered

by the western light,
and in their thousands, ox-eye daisies,
in drifts like snow on verges,

spikes of purple orchid sudden
in between. And I have learned to

recognise terrain by living things,
steer by the seasons and the light.

by Gill McEvoy

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