The Wells of Dee
I have always loved this conundrum:
The source of the River Dee in the Cairngorm mountains, they say,
Is the tundra of the high plateau
We who know the place might easily think so,
Considering the volume of snow
That lingers here, even in midsummer -
See - the fantastical albedo of the white fields
Above the brown heather slopes with the blaeberries?
The way the snow sticks in the coires:
White pork fat, warming the pink granite bones?
Snow the protector
Snow the propellant
Snow the source of the flow
Of the River Dee,
The progenitor of the prolific casdade that I have seen,
Underneath the Angel's Peak,
Frozen into silence.
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© alistair siddons, 2006
