Famine Wall

by Jon Miller

Over the hunched back of Beinn Dearg
    the famine wall buckles, rising and dipping
    along the ridge, going nowhere for miles
    pointlessly separating nothing from nothing.

Each day they climbed to the stones
    laid one atop another in exchange for oats
    to gain another yard nearer nowhere
    another inch further from hunger

Listen to them
    gaiseach a’ bhuntàta    Murdo’s sick cow
    Hector and Mairi gone on the boat to Oban
    Seonaid’s wee one near death    

    wishing for wings of gulls to lift them
    over the ocean to Canada to cousins brothers sons

Unzip the wall’s long line across the hill and you will find them

    beards sprout through moor grass
        women call in tumbling burns
            dreams of children quiver bog cotton

    their breath on the breeze that brushes
        your eyelashes, a breeze that is also
            fingertips on your cheek, a breeze
                
    that is now a wind keening the stones
        that is voices singing through stones
             a clarsach strumming them alive.

Being Dearg -  1,084m/3556ft, a Munro at Inverlael about 7 miles south of Ullapool.
gaiseach a’ bhuntàta - potato blight