Grandmother

Grandmother
She with the pale blue gunfighter's
eyes, my father called them, sword
hungry, battle starred old Celts
would have said, she being one
some lost high priestess
of Druidism spinning out Phenobarbital
dreams of past highland castles
and titles that turned to dust
before one even touched them.

She taught me to read when I
was three, sang me Bobby Burns
and skilled me in the Highland code, Scot
manhood, the grimmest of responsibilities
a Bushido in kilts and targes, Claymores and
Nec Flatu, Flactu Nec, "Neither wind
nor wave," can stop one of our family
or so said the blazon of the Edwards
MacEdward clan


Her eyes as she told
sword stories of Robert the Bruce, Wallace,
the Black Douglas and the wild skirl
of battlepipes calling the men to their laird
and often their deaths
leaving women
keening on the bare hillsides of the Highlands. She
died to haunt our house, walking the long hall
to my cold room, mourning outside, calling
all through Korea she stood by my side, her face
lighted by our ship's red battlelamps, us at General
Quarters, she, my grim weird, my ancestral banshee

It was her voice I heard when
our old house creaked and groaned in the Llano
winds as my own battles drew near, and fierce
and bloody times came upon me.


Keith Wilson