Thursday 27 February 2014

My land, is your land, is our land.

In wind swept silence my pup and I
Walked an ancient path of rocks sett still
Towards the headland's salt sea air.

I ponder long on my land's fate

And as the vista clear and bright

Shone out to me, my dog enrapt
In sights his nose could see
And sounds his ears could smell.

We came upon an ancient cist

Made by hands of millenia past
And by this saw the pluke like points

Of Tumulli standing guard, all in a row.

What great old men and women

Of peoples who once lived here
Above the Eden Valley fair
Were cold interred in ancient days.

Their spirits kept to vouch safe

The lands their hands had worked to clear
For all time that the tribe would fare
In health and wealth and prosperity

Yet frost and snow and glaciers great

Curtailed this hope and made their fate,
Ground down their land with glacial might
Flooding all that was left with sea.

The sea which carved its own delight

Among the ancient planes of rock
Which Grecian Titans tore and tortured, 
Twisting continents on their side.

And Galloway now is shaped and bent

Not by the hands of politician's might
But by Earth's own force of will - 
We do well to note - on Brighouse Bay.

Having heard the ever rising crescendo of fear and hatred  pouring out across my ears and eyes from folk whose terror of Scottish Independence rises by the day. I took time out to walk in the late winter sun, with Dillon the Dug and clear my head of the dull orisons of repeated statements of hypocrisy, ignorance and empty threat that belabour me daily from all sides.

This not about politics, it is about my land, your land, our land and how we can best hold it for future generations, as generations past have sought to hold it safe for us in ways we may not now agree but they thought for the best.


1 comment:

  1. I used to do a lot of 'deep' thinking when I took my dogs, Bessie, Gizmo, Scruffy and Sweetie out.
    There are standing stanes, Roman sites, ruined keeps and pre-Norman kirks all within a good dog walk; the sweet melancholy invoked by the the efforts of those long dead...

    I even figured out the Kirks had been Roman watchtowers as they were in a straight line.

    Last year Bessie died of cancer. I had a near miss myself just before Christmas and can't walk far without losing my breath.

    Now Gizmo has the same hateful lymphoma that she had ... I miss my walks.

    Give Dillon a pat for me.

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