Poetry
On Culloden Moor
The POM prompt #19: Things that go Bump in the Night
The battlefield was quiet and near deserted,
dark, the air cold and murky
with the fog of departed souls
Once, men rushed to a violent end,
destruction raged, 1500 fathers, brothers,
husbands, and sons an hour
by gruesome conflict devoured
the tried and tested charge a colossal failure
Ribs cracking, flesh rent in the horror
of muskets and bayonets
canons breathing fire
that flayed life from limbs
Bodies heaped together,
mounded over, clan by clan
fervent breath stilled, lungs as empty
as the eye sockets in a forgotten skull
The blood soaked earth wailing
to the tune of spectral pipes
This scene of a merciless government rout
now little more than a peaceful rolling moor
of heather, criss-crossed by walkways
that lead tourists through downfall’s plot
A place of quiet, but not of peace,
not of silence
