The annual battle has
begun:
Blood drenching the trees
With Jacobite wounds.
Winter advances unimpeded;
October has no Farquhar MacRae
To buy it time.
Like weary troops, the leaves drop.
Already, twigs show through
A dwindling canopy:
Dead insects caught in a resin of amber foliage.
The looting rain steals colour
From the fallen,
Leaving only traces of gun-metal grey
And the dark lustreless brown
Of old gore.
But in a hollow,
The ghostly fingerprint
Of a spider's web drowned in dew
Gives shimmering evidence
That the woodland lives on.
Reinforcements will arrive
With Spring in their step. |
Note: Farquhar MacRae was the Jacobites’
lone sniper who hindered the advance of the Williamite army under General
Hugh MacKay.
Published by Poetry Scotland Hairst 99 Issue,
October 99
© 1999, Rowena M Love |
