Joe Doolan’s Walk

Joe’s old boots sank deep in Fife mud.
Stones slid from the path into the Maspie Burn’s wild rush.
Rain fell through the oaks and cedars
into the brown tangle of his hair.
He didn’t care.
He needed this steep, soaking walk up the glen
to free his head and think. Something wasn’t right.
Something was missing from the plan. But what?
They’d studied the drone pics, tested the soil, 
counted every bug, bird, tree, leaf; 
they’d considered and consulted
drawn new lines on old maps.
Even so, some nagging, hard-to-put-your-finger-on 
aspect of the plan was wrong. Just wrong.

Joe trudged on
until he glimpsed the Yad at last
that gleaming sandstone wall
where the Maspie Burn runs out of earth
and falls, thirty feet and more 
into a foaming pool
and anyone can track the path
into a shadowy nook of rock and look
through the plummeting water into a blur of trees
as if you’re looking out from some secret, other world
but then Joe saw the girl – well, woman really – 
leaning from the cave’s stony lip
into the Yad’s shimmering fall.

Joe rubbed his eyes.
Decided he was seeing things. Dreaming. 
But then the woman lifted her head, smiled, 
raised a pale hand and waved him on.

Trainers. Torn blue jeans. Some kind of green
flowery T-shirt, drenched dark
from her drenched hair
Her eyes were also green
somewhere between honey and oak leaf.

Joe guessed this was maybe some hippy chick
come to find herself in nature
and think she knew it all. And get it wrong.
More Morningside than child of the glens.
But when she spoke her voice was 
slow and echoey.
‘Who be you?’ she said
And right away our man replied
‘I be Joe Doolan, Convenor
of the Falkland Multi-Functional Land Use Forum.’

And then the woman said
‘And who be your god or goddess; what be your holy thing?’

Joe swallowed hard. Clearly the woman was mad – 
touched his mam would say.
He spoke above the water’s roar.
‘We represent the voices of farmers,
gardeners, schools, businesses, 
various voluntary and conservation groups
to plan how the land may be designed
for multiple outputs of value and use – 
sustainable timber
carbon-sequestering marshlands
geo-spatially tracked rare breed cows
no-dig tattie fields
bee hives and cycle tracks.’

The woman’s green eyes shone.
‘And what about all the useless things?
What about the cascade of noonday light
through a mayfly’s wing?
What about the taste of snow on a roebuck’s tongue?
Who’ll speak up for them?’

Joe said nothing. The question made no sense.
He had to get a grip of things. 
So he took a breath and asked, all nice and reasonable
‘Are you staying at the campsite by the organic café?
They’ve maps for local walks and nature guides.’

No answer. Instead, this dripping hippy lass
did a bold and lovely thing.
She put a hand on Joe’s arm
and in the deepest, loudest whisper he had ever heard, said
‘I am dawn girl and wood witch and bog queen.
I am the wind that blows from the deep cold sea.
I am the mother of a thousand merry dancers.’

And then she stepped onto the very edge of the thinnest ledge
of stone and spread her arms and cried
‘I am the Cailleach. I am the deer of your heart.
I am the bright stag and the moonlit midnight hind.
I am the pearl in the well at the end of the world.
But you can call me love.’ 

And with her words still echoing
in the cave and in Joe’s head
she laughed and leapt
into the plummeting stream.
Joe threw himself towards her
maybe he could catch a reaching hand
but there was no telling the falling woman
from the falling water
and from the swirl and thrash of the Yad pool
no blue-jeaned body rose, no voice came
but the old, song of the Maspie Burn
strong and swift, as it had always been.

Joe knelt on the soaked rock.
He sobbed and shook and gasped
at the wild beating of his wild heart
and stayed that way until the rainy evening came
like a cool veil thrown cross the glen. 
Joe took one last look at the drowning Yad
scrambled to his feet, and ran and ran
down the slippy path
over the bridge
through the twilight trees
until he came to that great green field
where Ninian’s chapel stands, grey and roof-less
under big Fife skies.

Joe stumbled in. 

His head hurt. His bones ached. His soul ached.
He lay himself upon the broken chapel floor.
Rain fell into his eyes.
What on earth was the point of a chapel with no roof – 
just another useless thing – 
and then a memory stirred.
His grandpa had brought him here as a lad.
They’d peered into the cracks between the stones
found owl pellets, vole bones, moth wings
and Joe had smelled them, touched them,
held the stuff of life and death
in his trembling nine-year-old hand
while his grandpa explained
that the chapel had been built by the old laird
in memory of his son, dead at the age of three in 1910.
Then the Great War broke. The roof never did get put on
but when the men that survived
came back from France and Flanders
they liked the chapel that way. They’d loved and lost
so many pals and comrades blown to bits – 
they had no gravestone but the empty sky
no headstone but the moon.

Joe wiped the rain from his eyes.
All those ruined lives. All that death.
Never mind what’s the use of the land – 
for Christ’s sake, Joe thought, what’s the use of man?
But then the mad girl’s words came back to him –
What about all the useless things – who’ll speak up for them?


Joe raised his head and gazed beyond 
the chapel’s useless, roof-less walls.
The rain had stopped, the clouds were growing thin.
No moon, but a lonely shining star.
Fianna, heaven’s bright stag
gazing down on a Falkland field
searching him out – 

know thyself beloved on the earth


He struggled to his feet
and thought of the men back from war
wandering the chapel, looking for a moment’s peace
and he remembered those bits of life 
he’d cradled in his hand, all those years ago
and Joe knew then
that every leaf, pebble, twig
every bird cry in the wood
every gunshot, every hammered nail 
every touch, every kiss
everything, everything’s a tale
and life’s not about the schemes we hatch
but the stories that we tell.

Joe took a long, long breath.
He still had to think about the land.
He still had plans to make.
But things were different now.
Something had changed
like he was walking in the skin
of a beautiful stranger.
‘At last,’ he whispered to no one and nothing
but a fluttering moth and the entire cosmos
‘At last I can begin.’