I have not yet read every poem in detail but on a superficial read my favourite is On a Still Morning. I am drawn to short poems, having been subjected to Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) when studying English Literature A’ Level.
In On a Still Morning, Shepherd speaks of the sights and sounds of early morning. As soon as I read it, I was reminded of an early July morning at Loch Cill Chriosd. I recall the colour palette was pale, but a shaft of light lit up the loch in a diluted fashion. The sound was silence. As I watched, waited and listened, mist imperceptibly crept over the water. It was not until I took my eye away from the viewfinder of my camera I realised that apart from the foreground of the scene I could see very little of the view beyond the loch. Here are some images from that morning:

Misty Morning 1 – Alison Price, July 2019

Misty Morning 6 – Alison Price, July 2019

Misty Morning 4 – Alison Price, July 2019
And here is Shepherd’s poem On a Still Morning:
“I hear the silence now,
Alive within its heart
Are the sounds that can not be heard
That the ear may not dispart?
As white light gathers all –
The rose and the amethyst,
The ice-green and the copper-green,
The peacock blue and the mist –
So if I bend my ear
To silence, I grown aware
The stir of sounds I have almost heard
That are not quite there.” (Shepherd 2020)

Misty Morning 5 – Alison Price, July 2019
References
Shepherd, N. (1977). The Living Mountain. Edinburgh, Canongate Books.
Shepherd, N. (2020). In the Cairngorms and other Poems. Cambridge, Galileo Publishers.
