Lay the Future Down
I found this in my archives. I wrote it in 2005
Loch Stack
Come the showers o’er the water
Wash the morning light away.
Who has seed to sow and scatter?
Who will walk the fields today?
In Canada the land is ready
Hungry soil where life is sown
Sow the seed and grow the seed
And lay the future down
Solan geese are diving, wheeling,
High o’er Assynt eagles soar.
Upturned keels stand cracked and peeling
Empty creels will catch no more.
Flanders’ fields are silent, greening,
Poppy flowers in France full grown.
Sow the seed and grow the seed
And lay the future down
Flow’rs o’ forests falling, weary,
Passion spent at Passchendaele.
Blackbirds feast on Rowan berries,
Corbies croak their autumn tales
of Alamein, Tobruck and Naples
– Harvest hymns to scythe and bone.
Sow the seed and grow the seed
And lay the future down.
Spindrift eddies o’er the machair,
White the coat of mountain hare.
Travelers’ tales and songs and laughter
Mem’ries now in fields of Blair.
To Canada and France and Burma
Alba’s seed was packed and bound.
Sow the seed and grow the seed
And lay the future down
On other soils the seed was scattered
Other lands with fruits endowed;
Crofter, Cottar, Fisher, Traveller
Faces stare from archives now.
Silenced now the glen and township
Dried the stream of living song.
Sow the seed and grow the seed
And lay the future down
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