Isle of Mull
George Moore
A mull seems but a half-built hill and older
still than mountains I’ve known
round and bald as my father’s head
which I’ve tried so many times to climb
before he was gone and the mulls
remain princely but unglorified
I park on the roadside where a hint of trail
ascends up through the grass humps and stone
thinking if I am here I should really have
a trophy for my time a climb a peak
and so I climb into the late morning fog
till shale becomes a four-point scramble
slick as the devil’s tongue
hand over hand on a grassy vertical
and the top a noll a rounded bump
a field from which my father’s bald head shines
where the isle rolls out on a gentle wind
and standing where a great great grandfather
may have stood before we both descend
careful too as tourists have died by a false step
and then down to the car
and the inn and a cup of tea
and a sort of unconscious bereavement
as I’ve been thinking of the dead all day
with the calm brewed in single clouds
above a few slow sculpted sheep
grazing undisturbed on
the new sprouts of their hillsides
About the Author
George Moore’s poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, Orion, and Stand. He has published six collections, the most recent of which are Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FurureCycle 2016). He is a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for The National Poetry Series. His work has been shortlisted for the Bailieborough Poetry Prize and long-listed for the Gregory O’Donoghue and Ginkgo Poetry Prizes. After a career at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he lives with his wife, a Canadian poet, on the south shore of Nova Scotia.