"Shirakawa."
"Guided towards Shirakawa through green Perthshire glens,
if you're traveling in the north country fair
where the wind hangs heavy on the borderline.
John Waite, Girl from the North Country.
People ask us the way to the Shirakawa barrier.
And we reply, 'Take it easy.
The Shirakawa barrier is everywhere.'
The map's watershed is Shirakawa,
reading the names of burns running southeast,
allts running northwest.
Comrie's confluence of Lednock, Earn, and Ruchill
is Shirakawa, Edo to the east and the orderly market town,
oku to the west.
In twilight, deer, pheasants lacking
road sense, tumbledown gardens and close-ranked pines.
Any wee road where your fingers brush meadow sweet verges
is Shirakawa.
When you let the wheel turn through the glen with all
your attention on the minor dramas of passing places,
any one-street village with shops stocking fancy goods
and their butchers that sells a new brand of oat cakes
is Shirakawa.
Any clicked latch of a gate that makes a space for things
to come is Shirakawa.
My Shirakawa is an evening walk from the square, Dunira.
From behind tilted pine, a last ray of sun
fans over the square.
It lifts my shadow through the wooden rails,
fetches it far ahead of me.
Under the great Sycamore, a darker green cools the evening.
The deer browse mist, floating lifelessly,
seeming to sense my looking.
Lifting their heads then leaping the fence,
they fade into the wood beyond shafts of light that pick out
wisps on the dying branches.
Saint Fáelán's hill is Shirakawa.
Fáelán, that dumb saint, that splendid mute,
was never one to set himself over the higher peaks.
Clamber up the scree field fringed by toxic foxgloves
or go by stone crop scars snug in veins of dry rock.
I lie among bluebells, feet pointing east.
The saint's seat looks north towards the confluence.
I aim my arm down the glen of pebbles, glen Artney,
along the ridge of Bealach Ruadh, the red pass,
to the picturesque crown of Mor Bheinn, the big hill."