The Treasure The Blackhouse

By Neil Pinkett

i: The Treasure

a thunder
too tiny to hear
and shellsand avalanches
into the hollow
my bare foot revealed.
grain upon grain
cascade and are held
in the bottom of the bowl.

the footprint gets heavier
and heavier
till waves of shellsand
crash over it's listing shape
and it keels over
vanishes from sight
tumbling to the bottom of the shore.

forgotten

and remembered by those
for whom the wreck of a footprint
is a treasure.


ii: The Blackhouse

Upon Borve Hill
we came to a last house,
a blackhouse, discarded,
floating adrift
on those high waves.
It's thatch and beams
were saved before they could rot,
but the walls remained,
drenched in grassland.
A home
filling slowly up with land,
sinking, sinking
away from sight.

The people had fashioned her with care,
had known how to float a blackhouse
out through the centuries,
sure and steady
though the land be wild and surging...
Ah, but the people were long gone,
and the blackhouse was decaying
high and alone on Borve Hill
where the lazybeds lapped
up to it's walls
and nobody would return of an evening
to find it's warmth.

Maybe,
below the grasses,
a blackened place
where the ashes of peat-fires
of generations
smouldered
and cooled.