Highlands in the Heart

My heart is in the highlands

The lowlands are gone

My mind is making no bones about it

If my love will not wait

Then I’ll not hesitate

And follow the three kings

Who do not doubt it – do no wrong

Come kisses and runes

Remember your tunes

That play as the bag pipes on stages

And the Loch is not forgotten

By the songs they have begotten

As by Pan who listens throughout the ages

Oh four is the number and the number is six

Who must remember to dance at the jigs

And follow the Pages

Who dance like the sages

And beckon on old ancestor wigs

The caber is tossed

The rope is tugged

And men will be men

In ghost or as rugged

Their faces show lines

Their fathers once wore

As their bodies old sinews

Strong as lions that roar

The place in Glen

Where these favourite men

Pulled hand over hand

Until they won

Echoed with their Heave Ho

The rope tight like a bow

The line that can never be broken

Back through the mists of time

To the devil’s very own crime

These mountains have echoed to fighting

Cain fought Abel

Joseph did his father

Abraham prepared Isaac for the slaughter

But as you walk up Glen Nevis

And shadows leave the skies

The sun sets all men free

In its lighting

A Father's Day walk

Flocking crows down near Northload farm
Look and see a house on a hump
Tractors unload in yard or road
Like a yarn on a story spool
Hammers thump, thump
Starlings stall in midair
And fall, turn and bump
As flies buzz, buzz
Earwigs lug their prey
back to the rotten stump

Otter's little travel bristles
Through divided clump
The grass festooned
In the month of June
With seeds ready to jump

The old bridge tumbles into ruins
As days now pass us by
But the rhyne is green
With days unseen
No this is no day to die

Little green finch play on
limbs of skeletal Elm
And songs are sung by
Birds so long as sailors
Hang on to the helm

Clover fields are purple meals
For bees that suck at their flowers
And tea leaf docks
That spoil in cream shocks
Of clover patch powers

And the house rises up
On the high ground
The Doomsday Book once wrote
As safe on the island from
Avaricious eyes and only
Reached by boat

Now the house in ruins
Where periwinkles blossom
Brambles curl the Elder's bosom
Kingfishers cast their regal eyes
Down the stream
Of the sleeper bridge's dream
And the voices gurgle and gargle
Beneath, while
Above the butterflies float

The wool of sheep is cast about
Is strewn about the pen
Rusted troughs lie
Like a milk maids cry
Of the lambs many
begotten
Begotten, begotten
But not forgotten
This ruin on sacred Doomsday land
Saved by King William's hand
This ancient house still stands
Like a relic of old England

Elders have reclaimed most of it
Its roof collapsed long ago
The limestone bricks and mortar
Make up its end walls
Just a shell on this sea wrecked land
Just a cockle on the shore
Whispering to the wind
A home for nettles and starfish
And a collection of tumbleweed wool

Some how it is fitting
Somehow the fish just bite,
The green grass grows
Where cuckoos call, and the crows
black as night stare
As the clouds roll in so tight

Now the sea gulls cut fast
Like a scythe, the wind around
This summer island
And we say goodbye
To the feather and the sky
That rolls like a blue robin egg
Around them