Leaving Auld Reekie in a rented Vauxhall
Looking for the ancestral hill
Driving on the left (so unremarkable to you)
Crawling through roundabouts of Fife industrial estates
(Business Parks in my Amerenglish)
Nae vacation this – cam we tae California?
Roads narrow, reaction time shrinking
As we see those first terrifying signs
ONCOMING TRAFFIC IN CENTER OF ROAD
We narrowly miss whisking awa’ tae Dundeee
And I doubt a grisly end in some
Crossbow killing housing estate
(Apartment complex in my Amerenglish)
Then tractors and auld hotels with standing stones
(Look! Is that an oil platform?)
We are tailgated headlight flashed near sideswiped
Hooted at by claxons of rental BMWs
Yellow heraldry suspicious of Sassenach American German
(The difference is slight)
Until I am compelled to give my best world-shattering
Johnny Cash salute - erect middle finger pointing awa’ tae hell
More tractors
Muddy rocky road
Abandoned stone barns
We missed the road back there - there was no road
And there, our eponymous hill and the burn of our name
We stop by woods next to the barley field
And I dig a white stone out of the mud for my father.
But wha’ went ye intae this wilderness tae see
A man in comfortable clothes?
Comfortable clothes are found in rich men’s houses
I went to see the sproutin’ seeds o’ freedom
Or a muckle o’ independence
But, ach no, I slept in a rich man’s house
Auld Reekie uisge warehouse
Turned Air BnB
I ate in fancy restaurants
Where arrogant waiters judged me by my shoes
And refused us seating in the speckled cowhide booths
In short, in long,
I contributed to the slavery
To the subjugation of the place I long to see free
Dream to help set free
Oh, I glared at the big Sassanach beratin’ the wee bookshop clerk
About the despicable lack of choice in notebooks
Alba Saor!
But where were your banners , your marches
Your speeches and pamphleteers?
In the whole country I caught ne’er breath o’ the wind o’ liberty
Not until I got to Eire and met those grim looking bastards in Bogside
Marching for Catalonia in the police wagon’s flashing glare.
Wheesht, here’s to Eire, and to Catalonia.
Author: Duncan MacNae
Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees.
duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com
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