An Uaigh

An Uaigh

She turned from the lighthouse,
Leaving the Shiant Isles fading
Into the raw, grey, sea-shrouded distance.
Sloshing through the peat bog,
Thoughts of a hot bath and a warm fire
Fighting the biting cold of the dying autumn.

The two men startled her,
Behind the rise on the empty moor
With only the keening wind for company.
They saw her walking,
Nodded, and kept on digging,
Silence ebbing into bitter silence.
The stone looked new;
She glanced at the name but,
Hearing the awkwardness of grief,
She kept on walking.

The bath and the fire and the dram in her hand,
The food and the kinship and the glowing peats.
Why is the grave there?
She asked, remembering.
A description, the name on the stone,
Her words made light
By warmth and comfort.

Her grandfather's face
A bleakness turned to the fire.
A long, shivering silence,
Remembering
A grave being dug
For a woman
Forty years dead.

? Elfstone 4/5/03