For RR Johnston who pioneered the F-M rock climb on Slieve Lamagan in 1949Â Â Â
          Â
‘Descent’s the toughest part, hard on the knees.’
He rubs his barrel-knotted fingers
over boulders of arthritis in his own.
It’s his younger self talking,
the lad in his twenties
who zigzagged Mournes crags and cliffs, unnamed
until he and his friends, no satnav, no phones, scaled and claimed
the likes of the Raven’s Nest and ‘the F-M’.
Silence. He’s away,
remembering.
That chuckle in his eyes, the one that hooked the women – here comes the story:
in towering rain, well off the map, their army surplus sodden,
his cheap wee gutties useless on that mossy
upper slab so off they came, shoved
dizzy dazed into his jacket,
sock soles,
no going back though upward felt like
overhang,
the mountain itself tipping him back
into air ‘til there it was,
the edge
rough to the finger whorls but
it’s a hold. A teetering clamber up against the winds,
downpour still sheeting his glasses,
he twisted into place and sat.
Fuck me, he breathed.
Alive. Fuck me! Loud, lusty, and his friend laughed too,
full-chested cheers away beyond the fields below
their bellowed primal whoop at sheer survival.
So, that’s what that ascent became: ‘The F-M.’
Fuck me. My father’s life could have skidded,
bounded, slithered down the rocks,
crashed in gorse and heather, quenched in some
sheuch, trickle-bled away
before my spark lit.
My own ascents are unnamed.
Back from an awkward descent, one
lonely step, another, skidding, losing grip
in howling gusts, my oldest agonies reclaiming me
then weary-wake all night, I know nothing but that I too have
been somewhere
exceptional.
On my knee, my father’s compass. Its metal finger
tinkles against the glass case, swings like a dancer
around the neat, blue capital letters of the winds.
This tiny wheel measured distance on his maps,
proper maps in the browns, greens, ochres,
dirty snow-greys of the land itself.
At the top this round link here is
to wear it, as I do, so you’re
close to me, Dad.
Still my belay.
© Rosie Johnston
Picture 11054370, photograph by William Alfred Green, early 1900s, digitised from a glass plate negative, image copyright Mary Evans / National Museums Northern Ireland
Rosie Johnston’s four poetry books are published by Lapwing Publications in Belfast, most recentlyÂ
Six-Count Jive in 2019.
Off the Map is the title poem of her fifth collection, to be published by Lapwing in 2023. Her poems have appeared inÂ
Snakeskin,Â
The Phare,Â
London Grip,Â
Culture NI,Â
FourxFour, The Honest Ulsterman, Mary Evans Picture Library’s
Poems and Pictures blog
, Words for the Wild. Her poetry is anthologised byÂ
Live Canon,Â
Arlen House, OneWorld’sÂ
Places of Poetry anthology,Â
Fevers of the Mind andÂ
American Writers Review. She reads her poetry widely, most recently at Faversham and Gloucester Poetry Festivals.Â
http://www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com