From satellite or pilot height you’ll see
a continent of smoke, a mountain range
of Himalayan scale over Siberia,
concealing its own shadow
on the smouldering land below,
a tundra land awaiting redemption
from zombie fires. Down here,
where families carved precarious
livings from under heather slopes,
that peaty smoke of whisky on the tongue
tastes of ancient woodlands felled and burned,
of bog lands, sphagnum moss and ling
concealing dark ponds fringed with cotton-grass.
Here’s a coin-bright birch root, remnant
of primeval forest, hunting-ground
of a mythical warrior princess. And here,
carefully cut wet then dried, the sculpted
modernism of a neatly stacked bank
laid herringbone fashion to repel
wind and rain, where a whiff
of peat smoke smells like survival.
Here where wetlands are drained of life
to make up ground for oats, barley, wheat,
asparagus and fine grazing, where forest swamp
suffers improvement, rips torn for progress,
ash and oaken piles, aerobically preserved,
support remnants of willow walkways,
woven paths across the bog, a place
to stand ankle-deep and watch
jets carve their shining trails against the sky.
Cover photo credit: Polly Pullar
Aidan Semmens
Aidan Semmens, winner of the Scottish Poetry Library's Julia Budenz Commemorative Prize and the 2024 Deirdre Roberts Prize, lives in Orkney. He is the author of six published poetry collections. aidansemmens.co.uk