Poetry By Angus Ogilvy
April 1, 2010Angus Ogilvy visited us recently on Holy Isle and has kindly allowed us to re-print one of his original poems, “On The Island”. Angus originally framed his poem whilst visiting last May and completed it in November 2009.
On The Island
by Angus Ogilvy
Held with me
between the shock and the wonder,
an oystercatcher strutting
with his hands behind his back
voicing his concerns,
blowing his vexations
through a child’s first piccolo,
charging with a his carrot of alarm.
I watch him conjure
nightmares in the evolutions
of his three stone eggs
to shrivel seaweeds on the shingle bank
that he might dupe a passing crow.
Endless activity and frustration:
always the invention of another thing
to do, another fear, a found distraction,
lest a lurking nothingness confront existence,
reveal itself as certain as a cliff.
Better to be
with the dullness of ignorance
sheltered in conformities of stone.
Better to be
scurrying the greywackes, an anti-hero
screaming decoy presence as a charm.
Caught between the shock
and the wonder,
between the sea and its arc of emptiness,
wind decides the attitude of water,
wipes its moods across a passive sky;
brushes with the linger of a whisper
something that I ache to hear,
but cannot hold,
and ponder why.
©Angus D.H. Ogilvy November 2009
