Treeless landscape - Norman MacCaig

Except in grooves of streams, armpits of hills,
Here’s a bald, bare land, weathered half away.
It pokes its bony blades clean through its skin
And chucks the light up from grey knucklebones,
Tattering the eye, that’s teased with flowers and stones.

Something to do with time has all to do
With shape and size. The million shapes of time,
Its millions of appearances are the true
Mountain and moor and tingling water drop
That runs and hangs and shakes time towards a stop.

Prowling like cats on levels of the air
These buzzards mew, or pounce: one vole the less,
One alteration more in time, or space.
But nothing’s happened, all is in control
Unless you are the buzzard or the vole.

Yet, all the same, it’s weathered half away.
Time’s no procrastinator. The land thrusts
A rotting elbow up. It makes a place
By sinking into it, and buzzards fly
To be a buzzard and create a sky.