Olrig

by Stewart Sanderson

“A fine corn country, two miles and a half in length, and a mile broad, or thereabouts. Nothing memorable in it.”

‘Brother.’ The word cut
into silence like a tushkar
through black layers of peat.

‘Do you remember
Olrig? A bheil cuimhne agad
air sin, a bhrathair?

The old tongue sounded
strange to both of us by then
as snow fell outside

our tiny cabin
on the Hudson Bay; yet I
had not forgotten

what it was to be
at Olrig, an age ago
and neither had he.

In Iroquois I said so.