Dying Refrain

There is a forgotten place
Music reaches for it for it is there...
in some faery realm
down paths known only to folk
as live  deep in velvet green
amongst timeless mossed forests,
highland slopes,
and deep down in rarely discovered valleys.

It is there in intermittent
tinkling of tin-cans, bottle tops,
(hanging for mysterious
superstitious purpose
on fence wire),
for the wind plays these things
and it knows...

It teases at our senses, touches
the lost and displaced part of our souls
with a hint of gorse-flower
with a dying refrain
tangled myths
vague powerful dreams, and
lovers hopes
of wild irish midnight
and selkies.

The rocks and the stones know.
They are still, silent, and holy
the carved sacred remains,
bones
of a civilisation,
bones of some kind of hindsight heaven,
bones of a Brigadoon
or a Summerland
all but lost to us now.

It is like a whispered secret,
its ghosts sit on logs in furs,
around welcoming blazes and
drink honeymead,
  they walk everywhere.

It exists as a spirit
in the lilt and the laughter
twinkling eyes
accents of fast-spoken gaelic -
language in which every word
sounds like an ancient spell,
every word
evokes heather, dragons, and peat flame.

It is to blame
when the wind whistles hard in the eaves
when frost reddens your nose
when a hearth-fire sings in the silence, and
when the moon says "run away with me,
i will show you",
yes the moon knows.