That everyone could see
we are all ants scurrying
round the palm of a sometime
benevolent mountainside.
To everyone, the riches
of standing on the edge
of a loch’s dropping off point,
a thousand feet deep and falling.
Be the perfect ‘o’
of a child’s wowing mouth
beneath the soar
of a golden eagle.
Feel the scour of the wind
as it strips trees naked,
howling all around:
“You are alive!”
I wish you hills to climb,
a housefree horizon,
sunshine that hazes
and stretches its arms.
Have the gift of silence,
the roar of the world
and a sense of wonder
at the push and the pull,
the weft and the warp
of a planet that holds us
in a fold of its skin
for all of the blink of an eye.
Harry Gallagher
