Poetry Map of Scotland poem 71: Aberfoyle

The Fall of Water

written at the Little Fawn Waterfall, The Duke’s Pass, Aberfoyle

The lithe leap the river makes
demands its own vocabulary
as ballet does – technical, evolved, exact –
to match its lacy, poised deliberation:
grand jetée,

failli,

sauté de chat.

Rocks heaped in the rift,
frayed and grained by its passage –
a mouthful of teeth, with splintered branches
caught between grinding edges.
Some are weathered like knuckle-bones,
others patted to a fat-buttock roundness,
one a perfect ogee, like the keel of a boat.

In the dapples of the trees a dust-brown moth
abseils down the reveal of sunlight and is lost
among bracken, the stealth of birds
and the sleepy conversation
of water slipping between stones.

Elizabeth Rimmer

To view our map of Scotland in Poems as it grows, see https://stanzapoetry.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/the-map-revealed/ . For more information on this project, and on how to submit a poem, see https://stanzapoetry.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/mapping-scotland-in-poetry/.

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