Isthmus Hill

Isthmus Hill

What impulse takes us, sweating on a carn,
a crag or outcrop, to strive to build a cairn?

What makes the skin of weathered hands
tingle so for granite – its quartzy fingerholds

and lichen crusts – that here on Isthmus Hill,
as on Samson, we lug our clunking haul

of barebacked boulders, chafing in our grip,
build them drystone, stoop to plug each gap

with smaller chunks, and bid the heather
or the Anthocercis take seed upon the hearth?

Come on, clamber in. Be careful not to tip
a stone that might be Neolithic. On top,

one I lodged here clumsily rocks, teeters,
settles. Tomorrow, when nations are in tatters,

it might be Grimspound, some Clump or Caer,
some proud chieftain’s resting place or pyre.

These cairns: swallows own them, years, lands
transcended by the blisters on these hands.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2015. Isthmus Hill is near Albany, Western Australia. There is a large, hollow cairn at its summit.