I posted this image on the Doric TV Facebook page to promote the ‘wide open spaces of Aberdeenshire’ for well-being. I was ‘fair chuffed’ to receive the following correspondence back from across the miles…….
From: Graham Donachie a Doric TV Viewer from Dundee now living in Victoria on Vancouver Island BC.Canada.
From the North Sea shore to the Pacific.
My Poem for Bennachie.
The Land of the Standing Stones.
The hour is late and the moon is high
and I hear the sound of a fox’s cry,
hoar frost embraces my shivering self
in this eerie place of the ancient elf
and I feel fear stealing away my heart
on this silver night as the wind it yarps,
in this cold northland of the standing stones.
I’ve wandered high upon Bennachie
where the icy blast takes the breath from me,
where the blood of a battle so long ago
laps round my ankles in the crisp white snow
and I fearfull listen to the sound of the dead
who lie far beneath this path I tread,
in this barren land of the standing stones.
Once in the dawn of a yesteryear
in the sorrowful drop of a yestertear,
came the navis longa of the dark faced men
who left waste and rape in this eastern glen
and their eagle standards waved on high
as they marching passed on their way to die,
in this granite land of the standing stones.
Calgacus’s host stood upon this hill
in defiance of Rome’s Imperial will
but their defiance died upon pilum
of Victrix Vexillum
who carried the day
but left their bones
in this bloody land of the standing stones.
Now the sun has risen over the sea
and the rays of morning beckon me,
to forget the past and live in the now,
but I wonder why and I wonder how
they ever had to disappear,
those blue faced men who knew no fear
in my harsh cold land of the standing stones.
G…Mar..2005
yarps….moans
navis longa…..long warship
pilum…..javelin
Victrix Vexillum..Victorious Standards
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