On Sunday a friend and I sought the summit of Sochan Hill in Sutherland, gaining height along the inclined Coffin Road and then choosing to clamber up a sleep slope at the finish. There on the flower-strewn steeps I momentarily lost breath and nerve and, spread-eagled against the peaty earth, had to call in the presence and immediacy of the Felt Sense, to bring me back to balance with my body and the will towards mastery of my fears.
The form I have taken to narrate this experience involves an internal unravelling of the first line, one word at a time nested in successive lines. The first line itself comes from a poem by 'Like a Daemon' by Paul Vincent Cannon which was featured in a prompt exercise devised by Melisa Lemay for dVerse Poets Pub.
Thank you to Paul for the first line, and for first introducing me to the dVerse community in 2021, and thank you to Melissa Lemay for the prompt. And I appreciate the cheerful encouragement of members of the dVerse community, some of whom may offer me a name for the poetic form I have stumbled upon, in a reverse iambic sexameter.
And I didn't fall off...
Spread-eagled
* I was waking, walking, wasted like a daemon *
Here was treasure: milkwort, eye-bright, lousewort,
May-while, waking to my mortal transience, cleaved to deer-grass
as I clung there (walking not a likely option).
Old bravado vanished, panic wasted on the cliff-side.
Breath shat out in stutters, painful like enchantment;
hacking heels to boulders, reached in. Howled a wolf call
to the one whose Presence soothes my bounding daemon.
* first line from 'Like a Daemon' by Paul Vincent Cannon
© Kathy Labrum McVittie 22 May 2024
writingpresence 
I love what you’ve done here! These lines especially stand out to me:
“Old bravado vanished, panic wasted on the cliff-side.
Breath shat out in stutters, painful like enchantment;”
Painful like enchantment, what a striking phrase. I am very happy you didn’t fall off. I assume there’s a reason it’s called Coffin Road?😱
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Thank you Melissa! The Coffin Road is a gentle slope along the side of the enchanted hill, and used to be the route from the small settlements to their nearest graveyard. Off this track the route to the “summit” goes straight up, at an angle that I had misjudged. My friend is shorter than I and managed fine despite mild osteo-arthritis, but I am nearly six foot tall and revisited the same vertigo as in the school gym sixty years ago…
Luckily I gained strength from hanging on (spread-eagled) to Mother Earth for dear life, steadying my racing heart with some slower breathing, and calling in the wild spirit of Wolf, my companion animal. Once I was upright on my feet again, we made it to the top with no problems, and ate our lunch looking out over a view towards my village by the sea. And decended via the Coffin Road to Clyne Churchyard by a gentler route.
For me, the experience of the racing heart of excitement in enchanted places is not much different – I now learn – from the one of sheer panic!
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I am 5,1”, and I’ve shrunk an inch.😅 I am totally out of shape for a trek like that. I can see how the feelings are similar. I think of the feeling on a roller coaster climbing up the hill.
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You’ll not get me on a roller coaster! 😉
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Wow, Kathy, that was some experience, and what a place to experience that, on Coffin Road! You chose the perfect form to convey the event and an excellent line from Paul for the job. I like the treasures you listed, the phrase ‘cleaved to deer-grass’, and especially ‘breath shat out in stutters’, which evokes panic.
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Thank you dear Kim for enjoying the revisited experience and for your astute reading of my work.
“Cleaved” is one of those words that has two opposite meanings simultaneously, as in “clinging to” and “split apart from” – the ambiguity I felt in both trembling and triumph. Ah and yes, the panic! Which abated once I was upright as the slope levelled out and we reached the windy plateau and the summit.
Only 226 metres above the sea level we started from! But how good the picnic tasted at the top! And how exquisite were chickweed wintergreen blooms,, white and starry, on our way down.
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Your cento is beautifully crafted …. job well done, well done!!!
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Ah that’s lovely and reassuring of you Helen!
I was carried away by the words themselves, as usual, and missed out on the stitching and collaging of a series of authors’ works …This is a form to which I want to return…
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Your poem is so well done and rather brilliant – and what an experience to have!
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That’s a lovely esponse – thank you!
Yes a heart-racing experience it was too. The following day we had an adventure on the flat, getting stuck (temporarily) the wrong side of a fnece between the sand dunes and the sea-shore. Humbly retracing our tired steps to an overlooked gate was much preferable to pole-vaulting the barbed wire …
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I love what you did from the first line… it sounds like a scary walk for one with vertigo… happy you made it… strangely I always feel that walking down is harder than going up.
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Ah I know what you mean Bjorn – that sensation of jelly muscles that I too get if I descend more steeply and faster than I should! Fortunately our route down was much more gentle and passed through a delightful showing of Trientalis europaea, chickweed wintergreen, so many blooms like white stars among the heather.
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This is expertly wrought! 😍 I especially like; “Old bravado vanished, panic wasted on the cliff-side.”
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Thank you so much for witnessing my panic – which is, after all, the play of wildness within the emotions that pass through.
The great god Pan, cavorting like a goat on the hillside!
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Kathy, I like the line you chose from Paul’s poem and I like what you did with it. Your character shines in this.
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Thank you Lisa for your generous validation of this shininess. I reallly do feel seen, and that makes me warm – on a rainy cold day when my guest has travelled 600 miles home, and I have Stayed In – no hills, no scrambling up precipices!
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You’re most welcome, Kathy. Sounds like a nice visit is in the works ❤
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That was some hike! You wrote a well the extension from Paul’s line.
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Yes, one I haven’t done for a year or so, during which I’ve been down in England on the edge of the Flat Fenland. Hence the panting and breathlessness .
But lovely to achieve the summit, and to wander home through the lanes past the newly leafing trees, with a sense of completion. (and tired legs). We bought a takeaway Indian meal from ‘Sid’s Spice’ that night!
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A lovely finish to the day.
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A unique way to incorporate Paul’s interesting line. It must have been exhilarating to make it to the top of that “hill”;and enjoy the view! I especially liked your description here. “Breath shat out in stutters, painful like enchantment”
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Thank you Mish! I’m noticing that enchantment, and other emotional highs, can be nearly as painful and discombobulating as the unpleasant sensations of fear. Sometimes they are identical in effect.
The view was great from the top – on a rather misty grey day we were glad of my friend’s excellent binoculars to “gather the light”, and we could even see my little house.
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Waking, Walking, those are hard words to find in our others’ posts. I’m proud of you. And would lay and rest if I had climbed your hill and found your pretty spread-eagled flower bed.
BTW, we’ve been retired 25 ( Mrs. Jim) and 23 (myself) years and have fairly well finished our desire to travel. We have visited at least 82 countries. Greenland is on our newer bucket list, soon? My list, https://jimmiehov3.blogspot.com/2021/08/countries-where-i-have-been-78-of-them.html?showComment=1716438967251 .
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Wonderful; I shall be an armchair traveller and put that 78-of-them blog on my TV screen. I have only been overseas to Switzerland (in my college gap year 1972 and then again for a work conference in 1975) and all the rest of my journeys were in UK.
But at 71 now, I am feeling the draw of Italy-in-winter, so who knows?
Thank you for your encouraging words about my poetising. I do love the palpable sense of Community in dVerse. It’s accompanied and comforted me through some thorny times!
Warm wishes to you and Mrs Jim!
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Kathy, you picked the perfect line from Paul to share a scary experience so poetically! Amazing write, truly. ❤️
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thank you dear Punam and a starry field of Scottish blossoms to you xxx
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You are so welcome and thanks from the bottom of my heart for such lovely Scottish blossoms. Xoxo
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