Long Cairn Poems

The Spirits of Culloden. 
This is like a pilgrimage, a try tae come every year,
Gather at the cairn, meet old friends, wipe away a tear.
Standin on that moor, that once with blood was sodden,
Paying respects...

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RED

One hundred years ago in Pollockshaws
A man was laid to rest,
From humble beginnings to a martyr
They buried Scotland’s best.

A man who stood for the people
A man unshaken and proud,
Till the imperialist and capitalist murderers
 Connived...

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Dawn's Embrace:
Adret: Dawn paints the face of giants,
Where sunlight warms and shadows dance.
Aiguille: Fingers pierce the azure sky,
A challenge whispered, sharp and high.

Earth's Whispers: 
Dome: Molten heart, now cold and grand,
A silent testament to time's...

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Grandma's Pets

My granda went away to sea
For many months on end
He'd travel on a fishing boat
With his brother and a friend

He used to write home regularly
And tell some quite tall tales
About being in a far-away...

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Memories, someone asked?
Here’s one. Let me pull it out from the past,
Let me set it next to the grandfather clock in the parlor,
That used to count out time in chimes by the hour.
Mother is sitting...

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The Bichon Frise

The Bichon in chiffon looks so frou 
That the crowd duly wowed has to coo 
‘Til the dog starts to droop
And its owner to scoop 
Some acutely embarrassing doo

The Border Collie

It was not...

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SUMMER SOLSTICE

Queen Meabh stood beside the cairn, her velvet cape fluttered in the night air,
She called onto the Goddess Aine to return the moon safe to its hidden lair. 
Braziers crackled as wood and turf...

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  (  It seems the only thing eternal life has left me is eternal tears. 
For my lost son Christopher; named after the god who suffers. )



      ...

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Sundial
My passion is the silent weather vane
The gambrel brought such sorrow
Much I marveled this roughcast cairn
Eagerly I looked for the lintel

I have dreamed of the clocks
Eagerly I looked for the masonry
It was heterodox
Somewhat louder than...

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The mountains rise like white haired ancient gods.
The wolves howl their age old forgotten runes.
In the blue sky birds perform their glissades
As they fill the air with their joyful tunes.
There are desolate, untrodden valleys,
Where the...

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Youth I say now, How?
Is it possible renascent.
One cannot understand, one cannot remake.
Can one pay for others crimes and mistakes?

So sad to remember the impact just now .
For decades have passed of imperious vows.

I feel...

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Majestic, barren, rock-cropped braes ascend—
Arrayed, green-clad, in heather, gorse, and fern—
As mid-day, misty, dark’ning clouds descend
To cold-embrace each soaring tor and burn.

From heights unseen a torrent cascades free,
Unfettered into deep Ben Nevis’ glen;
Then onwards toward...

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Totems of What If

Can we ever escape
that which we create
but often choose to ignore

Like the mismatched rocks of a cairn
random choice is not an option
complimenting shapes and sizes
make up one's balance
one's direction
one's harmony

Yet some

Aspiring high...

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I shall not linger, tarry, where,
Beneath the oaks, out of the glare,
I had a dog to bury, ere
I lose control, emotions flare.
Among the roots, precise, with care,
There was so little room to spare:
A cairn of...

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Mother, I feel the weight the spinning world.
I feel each parental nudge, as a rock, in the cairn of my life,
the weight coats my fragile fleeing thoughts, dulling.
The spinning child teeters to adult whirlwind, still,...

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In the hot A-Ga-Ming night
My wife and I skip the July 4th fireworks
At the sandbar down south on long Torch Lake

Start our own shoreline fire

Count the red electrified dorsal fins
Of the motorboat salmon swimming upstream
Migrating...

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O're the rock strewn shores of Loch Lomond, upon the glaciered northern rock,
A lonely, barren, desolate stand, refuge to ancient Gaelic stock.
In this land o're grown with heath, tween' a realm named Rannoch Liath, 
On...

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MacGregor was our first pet dog
a cairn terrier, a little bundle of fun
being adopted I found home strange
my pal MacGregor with me love to run

Also in my upbringing growing up
had two lovable cats Jinky and...

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The wizard will know everyone I met along the way said.
Okay, I thought, for I am from Kansas and not daft in my head.
I looked for the curtain as I pranced down the yellow brick...

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The wizard will know everyone I met along the way said.
Okay, I thought, for I am from Kansas and not daft in my head.
I looked for the curtain as I pranced down the yellow brick...

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The beach gathers its dead. Thousands of horseshoe crabs
come home on the full moon’s tide. Their courting dances, 
scrawled with claw and carapace in the wet sand, leave
with the ghost hands of nursing Autumn wave.

Their...

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Of Cairns and Kivas

The cairn went together without effort -
each stone calling out to be next 
to take a seamless place among the others, 
and when they were all in place,
each making their willing sacrifice,
they...

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Well that’s something new I said with a twist.
A lopsided pile of dogs that went past my wrist.
They are still coming down! Watch out said boy Pete.
I looked to the sky, and was bombarded by...

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The whistle blast, the hiss of air,
To one and all they do declare,
Old one hundred has left the station,
On shiny ribbons, once crossed the nation.
It proudly pulls number twenty five,
One of the few to still...

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Gustavo’s Rite

He walked onto the harbor beach at sunset,
planting a small net on a pole like a guidon,
and setting soiled cloth bags around it.
Alone on the beach he began his dance.
Mismatched clothes flapping, he swayed,
then...

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