Deirdre dreams

Sharing the same sort of thoughts as Jim Mackintosh.

Photo ©Stephen McKay

Rowan berries in the snow

Rubies’ gleam no more intense,

Cold pierces to the bone.

The raven spreads frost-stiffened wings,

Black plumes will feel the wind no more,

His hair swept back from snow-white brow.

Red drops, bright berries, ruby lips,

In a dream where passion cools like winter breath,

And happiness drifts and fades, December mist,

She touches with trembling finger,

Her love’s life blood,

And begins a life of winter weeping.

August 1922

To know that death is waiting,
Beyond a turn in the road,
To know that home, the place of beginnings,
Will also be the ending.
To have so much to bear,
And to know you are just one, and a weak one at that,
And still to drive home, to say goodbye.
To drive on to the last bend in the road,
Between fields and stone walls,
Tangled blackthorn and blackface looking on,
With the clouds rolling overhead,
And the hedgerows full of blackbirds.
Behind, in the house, a woman at the window,
Love left by the hearth,
And the last sound, the rattle and whine of death.
So much waste, so many years of shed blood,
And yours not the least.
No beauty in this terror, if not in the thought,
To go home and pass beyond the last bend in the road.