Sunset on the River Tay at Dunkeld

Black air stands behind me as I look west. A band of hard orange light slides behind the dark hills of Perthshire. The chill of night descends from the stars though the sun’s heat still radiates from the stones of Telford’s bridge like the embrace of a lover just before sleep. This moment, when Dunkeld fades into darkness and the sinuous Tay whispers, is a tether to bygone ages before cathedrals and bridges, before motorways and railroads. The cone-shaped tops of pines and the skeletal branches of March oaks stand alien and wondrous in the gloaming.

My breath becomes a ghost as the sun dies. These vespers will climb the thick smells of young rivers and patient, snow-crusted shoots into the empyrean. This is no lament, merely an impulse from the thin times, those bright thresholds that hold me in thrall. If we did not capture and measure time, did not catalogue and name it…would it not cease to exist, cease to be a golem of enslavement?

The lights now glow in town and the bridge stones have gone cold. I don’t think I’ve ever wondered if the sun would rise.

Article Comments

  1. Andi March 23, 2012 at 11:45 pm

    Gorgeous shot and words!

  2. Vacation Scotland April 1, 2012 at 1:30 pm

    A very poetic way to express the feeling that a native of Dunkeld like myself feels about the mighty River Tay.

    1. Keith Savage April 1, 2012 at 3:51 pm

      Thanks for the kind words!

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