Madge

by Richard Myers

Three fleece Madge taught her daughter where to challenge fences,
evade  dogs and hunker in the corries where the tarns lay,
water clear as air, cold as a tyrant’s heart, high above the treeline.

Here, breezes coil in the cwm, foiling clouds of midges, cooling
in the midday heat where sunblest rocks tick, shedding shards
on frosty nights.

Madge lived a long and man-free life, was claimed by unsheeply age,
and now her daughter curls to sleep beside the bones the hill fox left.
Never named since never seen she roams the high hills yet.