NIGHTINGALE SONG

 

The powerful and beautiful song

Of the common nightingale

Has a songful rhythm and rhyme

And the small passerine bird

Whose voice belies its size

Has beauty that strikes a chord

THEY MUST CROSS THE BARREN EARTH

 

They must cross the barren earth

Where once wheat and barley grew

A land where nothing lives in the mud

And an eerie silence hugs the land

Until the chattering of machine gun fire

Breaks the quietness of the morning

And hails of bullets cut like a scythe

Until like wheat and barley they fall

GOLDEN GOWN

 

The deciduous trees still have their foliage on

With autumn changing hues like a chameleon

From yellow and gold and red and brown

Some leaves have already began falling down

Then the autumn gales come quite inevitable

Leaving the once proud trees quite skeletal

Sadly, now all the leaves have fallen down

Thus adding to mother nature’s golden gown

GATHER IN THE WOODLAND LILIES

 

Gather in the woodland lilies

Kissed with natures gentle dew

Lay them on the polished oak

And bid your love a fond adieu

THISTLEDOWN, IN IDLE FLIGHT

 

Thistledown, in idle flight

Drifts upon the highland wind

Like ancestral spirits

NEVIS

 

In the lochs reflection

Could be glimpsed

The gentle caress of clouds

Atop the granite peaks

Before they thickened

To hide the Ben

Then separated like parting friends

To reveal the stark silhouette

Against the blue

And through these inconsistent clouds

The sun would burst

Illuminating the glen

And its heathered hills

As the clouds moved west

The sunbeam moved

Like a torches light

And in the distance

The hills appeared to move

As if in a lantern show

Then on the freshening wind

From the west

Squally showers blew in

And the sun painted

A rainbow across the sky

And as quickly as it had arrived

The showers blew away

And the rainbow faded

Evaporating to nothing

Then the sun began to set

Beyond the western isles

And turned the sky red

With streaks of pink and gold

Decorating the whole sky

And when the sun sank

Beyond those misty isles

The night wrapped the glen

In its dark shroud

AUTUMN REFLECTIONS

 

I stood on the wet sand

On that cold autumn morning

In the autumn of my years

With the breeze off the sea

Chilling my old bones

And gazed out across the bay

To the distant purple hills

Their edges blurred and softened

By the early morning mist

Their indistinct silhouette

Reflected on the moving water

The tidal water pulling at the reflection

As it moved inexorably to the open sea

And seemingly carrying with it

All of my unfulfilled hopes and dreams

With a shiver I turned from the scene

And made my way along the beach

My eyes were drawn to the hillside

Where the sparsely covered trees stand

With the last of the leaves falling

Each fluttering to the ground

Each leaf’s fall symbolic

Like the dates of a calendar

Being peeled off one by one

Ticking off the days of my life

As I head towards my winter