The reckoning

Perhaps he was astounded
when the second son wouldn't follow
the same road as the first, but smoked
from the age of ten and injected at twelve,
stashed loot beneath his bed,

and yet he never thought
why the elder did none of these
but heeded his call to high places,
scarce looked at Cuillin's crest
but sought heaven, as if joy
sprang from the barren rock.

The old man, widowed as he was
from youth and having nothing else left
but his army pension must have been proud
to see his own young flesh
beckoned by sun beyond cloud.

That life was odd, with even share
of good and bad, he must have thought,
that fate took with one hand
as it gave with the other,
even to the point when solid rock
gave way. Unfeathered as Icarus,
the watched boy landed in the couloir
till blood dripped from his face like rain.

He must have been ungrounded
with one lost and the other gone on pathless stone
and yet he never wondered why
the second was ablaze with strength
from the day he dug his brother's grave,
heaped round shovelfuls of Earth
on the rosewood coffin.


Colin