Circles Of Fire Copyright © 2009 James Knox Whittet

They cannot conceive how it is possible for any mortal to express the conceptions of his mind in such black characters upon white paper: Martin, Martin, 'A Late Voyage To St. Kilda'. (1698)

You brought the written word
to those islands where voices,
song and memory reigned to keep
the terrors of the dark at bay.

On luminous afternoons, the sundial
of rocks was caressed by time's restless
shadow; gannets exploded into mirrored
surfaces of bays beneath blizzards of cliffs.

On cupped evenings of summer
when Atlantic winds contained their
breath, fulmars floated above themselves
in shards of sunlight on suspended

wings, and the angular green fields
of corn were flecked with gold
between crossed stone walls, veined
with the orange dyes of lichens,

while, on the hill, the forefathers slept
beneath their coarse quilts of heather.
How could all of this be reduced
to scrawled lines on scraps of paper.

In Hirta's parliament where the
measured council of the elders' voices
rose above the Babel of the gulls,
there was no need for Hansard,

and in the Gaelic ballads, crooned
around the centered circles of fire
each night, the spoken word traveled
through mysteries of smoke to echo

beyond where ink could reach.