Bloody death and Betrayal

The blood sings,
while in a distant place
a drum calls forth it’s dead.
Out on the hillside - all is still.

“Upwind man, always up” the Ghillie cries.
The eagles soar to dizzy heights above us,
on the updraught, waiting for the drop.
eager for the kill.

Look! Pitted antlers, etching
throat exposed,caution like a mantle;
we crouch, guns primed, like fallen.
eagles, exultant in ‘the chase’.

The canvas of the moor turns red;
the brutal decadence of violent death
rears like bile spilled. Forces dark,
malevolent, sing out to greet his passing.

This glen has seen it all before as
kith and kin raised high the claymore;
swung it wide in brutal swings
to murder.....and for what?

The drum beats true and clear
while others spill the quafe
of blood’s betrayal in this place.
I ‘keen’ my loss for beauty rich and free;
for decadence and death are all I smell.

Songs of life and liberty float downward
to the lifeless eyes of the dead beneath.
Those who'd dreamed of honour
and glory in this cursed glen, Glencoe.