![An animated image with the words 'bog god and god boggy' in the centre. Above and below the words are a set of crossed bones, and then a single bone is on the left and the right side of the image. All the bones are painted in a very loose, naive looking style, with messy watercolours. The bones vary in colour from dark brown to bright yellow, but they all look old and discoloured, like the bones have rotted beneath the ground before finding their way into the picture.](https://vitalcapacities.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/crossbones-title.gif)
Bog Gods
![An animated image with the words 'bog god and god boggy' in the centre. Above and below the words are a set of crossed bones, and then a single bone is on the left and the right side of the image. All the bones are painted in a very loose, naive looking style, with messy watercolours. The bones vary in colour from dark brown to bright yellow, but they all look old and discoloured, like the bones have rotted beneath the ground before finding their way into the picture.](https://vitalcapacities.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/crossbones-title.gif)
My first stab at an actual, proper, real, official, legit fourteen-lined sonnet. And it just so happens to be bog-themed. I wrote this in response to my friend Rabindranath Bhose’s work, who is currently working on a boggy solo-show which will be opening this June at Collective Gallery, in Edinburgh. Rabi and his boyfriend, Oren (who is also a super interesting artist), came to stay with us in Shetland a month or so ago. We visited lots of bogs together (including the site where the Gunnister Man was found, about a 15 minute drive from our house here), and I owe a lot of my current, reinvigorated, love of bog-lands to their visit.
So, the bog sonnet. This is where I’m up to with the edit so far (though it’s still very much a work in progress, so go easy on me!):
Thy holy bog / Riddled with holes
All categories stray / Graven made whorls
Other-World’s holes / Face holy sky
Sphagnum crusty stars / Moon shaven thigh
Pot holed skies / Knotted with graves
Bodies aether-deep / Carpet bone weaves
Sopping arid graves / Death reversed tomb
Firmament portalled peat / Bog bless’d gooch
Rite bidden tomb / Fecund stone cog
Ensouling our rot / Thy holy bog
Salt lubes cog / Hanged Man brains
Prayer crossed things / Loss borne gain
Feet like brains / Riddled with whorls
Preserved can’t stop / Other-World tolls