Rite of Return

My people are those who never got where they were going
Who never made it to that sunny California farm or
The green Willamette valley, who didn’t know the 
Orange groves were stolen.
Turned back at the border, with whom the 
Thought of flight,
Taking leave, moving on, 
Is always in our hearts
We are always leaving
The farm that turns to dust
Boarding the waiting ship while 
The houses burn
Skipping out in the middle of the night 
Without the kid’s toys, rent unpaid

We are tumbleweed people, piling up
In unused church parking lots, railroad sidings
Filling the roads and the abused fields until 
A spark ignites us and we rage
Or another wind arises, driving 
Us to the next rest stop on Interstate 5 
Where we can get out of the car on green grass
Put out a sign begging for food and gas

What did we leave behind?
A house with broken windows, sounds
Of children playing, grandma’s cooking
That can never come again 
We left the creek full of trout
The green hills full of new sheep
High places where our grandfathers carried stones
Our old way of speaking. 

What did we bring with us?
Stuffed animals, a bibleful of names.
The phone number of a man we can see for work.
A pistol under the seat.

What did we leave behind?
Names of trees, seven words for rain 
The stone at the meeting of the ways
Bones of grandmothers grandfathers
Babies that never saw the dawn
The sigh of waves on white sands
Song of the wind in old branches
The beach where the fishing is good, 
Sunny spots in the wood, the place of peace.
Querencia still in the corner of our hearts,
Our querencia our desire now only in our heart.

Fields full of feannagan curving sinuous 
In the flat place by the fairy river
The hum of bees in thistle-grown gardens
Calls to us, wakens us to our yearning
For nostoi - after all the whirlpools and the monsters
To walk again ancestral woods

How will we return?
Burn wisps of longing
Incense of disappeared thistle gardens
Sing salmon by the failing falls
Sing old hurts, old houses, old walls
Mouldering in the oak wood
Whistle for wind to bear dust 
Slurry sand with tears, erode greed,
Eat away fear of the rich man’s dead white hand 
Hiding in the bunker.
Take rosemary for remembrance, rue for regret, borage for courage,
Meadowsweet to heal the broken,
Bury them in a three a.m. hole dug 
At the crossroads of our hearts.

From this broken circle, this nation lying crushed,
Will we return in a hundred thousand tour busses
Tennis shoes squeaking, baseball caps turned sideways
Kids looking bored at their phones?
Will you greet us if we come back as born again lairds
Dropping fat stacks for kilts 
On the royal mile, dreary reanimation 
Of the greed that sold us away?
Perhaps the wheel will turn again, thousands 
Sailing drifting back like seaweed
From Nova Scotia, sneaking ashore
At night in leaky rowboats

Would it be worth it then, if we could then return
To each other, tune hearts to old songs
Ask “Are ye well? Are ye well?” eyes shining 
As we pass on our way
If then we could gaze clear eyed at the murder machine
That drove us away, pulls us apart
Takes everything, everyone that ever matters 
And breaks them, dirties them, cheapens them
Tells us the lies we still hold dear
That never ceases to remind us what depraved
Murderous cannibal savages we are
Our ancient languages pidgin garble
Our haggis and skirlie indigestible
Our substandard children irredeemable
Our mothers and our sisters disposable
Our brothers and our sons fit only for
Cannon fodder, booze, and pills?

This is the burden of a broken people
Burden of fathers, burden of the auntie
Who is little Ethan’s mom
Burden of nations borning nations dying
Vision of a watery sun coming through 
Clouds swept across high mountains
Far from the sea. 

What is this nation? This country
Patrimony motherland soul’s home
Querencia land of heart’s desire
It is the mountain we are climbing
One slip one tumbling fall tumbling
Onto another cartwheeling building
Speed over the ice, the snow,
Boulders of forbidding dreams 
Until we break on the old stones below
The old hunt, old unfaithful lovers,
Old wars, old lies, old cities 
Burning beneath a waxing sun.

So what went we into the wilderness to see?
Our songs must now be more than elegy,
No home no home we found, so 
Vaguely comical we return to 
Old imaginings, the glory of the old north
The tartan of the ever battling unknown clan
But now I’ve gone and ruined any worth 
This rambling song ever had
With the old north and those faded screen print
Tartans and that damned doomed raid on Catraeth
Chasing us across time, down mountains
Over seas through the sagebrush 
To this gully in the land of the bottom dollar
This home of no home

You have seen us
Ridiculous with our plastic heather blossoms
Noisy off the bus or walking heads down hands in pockets
Knotwork tats and bulging bellies, pink shirt, white tennies 
We have heard the permissible marching songs
The pipe band plays only two
And didn’t the doomed lads look fine marching off to die

And who are we anyway, nameless rabble
Stuck to the teats of the sanctioned societies
With their portraits of the so called chiefs 
Who sold us away for a fine house
And a deer park and some grouse?
Who are we to claim this sad inheritance of stilted marching bands,
Joyless dancing, harmless bale tossing, log heaving, fat-bellied feats of futility?
We are the ones they skipped away like white stones and green
From the crow haunted beach at Camas an Darach
Skipped away over the water like stones to Carolina, to Nova Scotia,
To the ends of the world, come the long way around
In our polyester tartantry, stumpy-legged children 
Brandishing a plastic dagger.

You ask us what we come for
You wonder why we come back
And strut around like we own the place
And spend too much money driving around non-stop
Looking for blackbirds by the shieling 
The woodland clearing alive with bees and 
Our great great great great grandpa’s tame hedgehog
For our vanished Eden that never was -
No, not Eden. Eden was the first
Home that we lost and judging from the 
Stories, I guess our people
Have never stopped running from the
Angel and the flaming sword.

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 View all posts by Duncan MacNae