i
They accept our extremism as endemic,
native to our every part:
"Today's weather will remain fine
except in the extreme north of Scotland."
Have you ever heard them talk
of "the extreme south of England"?
ii
A man that lives and does not think
will bring us all to ruin's brink,
but the man who does not love the earth
and live its beauty on the pulse,
for all his intellectual worth
in last resort will play us false.
This thought I had again last night
when I turned off my reading light
and through the opened window lent;
It rushed in on the garden's scent:
the world behind the argument.
iii
Of the towns and villages in all Scotland
give me first and last - Aberfoyle;
neither Highland nor Lowland, but the meeting place
of bristly Highland and lush Lowland grass.
Here, where the road
sits back on metalled haunches
for the sudden leap to Loch Katrine,
here, where the habitual round of cultivation ends,
let us turn our backs
lean forward into the gradient.
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©Renate Mitchell. May not be reproduced in any form online or offline without explicit written permission.