Ballad Collecting in the Scottish Highlands

• The song-gatherer and I pass
• harp-shaped hills, green
• sheep-shorn to velvet,
• cross a burn
• to a stone croft and
• a smoky room
• a hobgoblin Pict
• sharply hospitable
• judges with flinty eyes
•  
• he will not sing for us
• until the gatherer
• lines out an old ballad
• We walked down by the cloudy loch
• then, reedy and quavering
• he sings
• his creaking voice finding
• ancient melody and rhyme
• the slaughtered babes
• the blood
• the banished love
•  
• I sink to a three-legged stool
• knees to chest
• the satin intimacy of curves
• worn by all the buttocks
• of the long-decayed dead
•  
• all the silent walk back
• red sun behind us
• we burn in his fury
• and still breathe
• the heather-scented air

Photo by Carmen Roman on Unsplash