Seasons

by Jim Miller

In the space of one month, three friends died, two of ‘natural causes’ and one in a mountaineering accident on An Teallach.

Sunlight buttered the glen
as we drove to the wedding.
The birches wore fire.

The same sun three seasons on
scattered its bright coin
on the loch

as we sat on the warm grass
too many for the kirk to hold
and listened

to the tributes loud-speakered
from the lectern 
to a life well-lived.

Death, you had no place
with us. You were elsewhere,
breaking another on your anvil.

Same week, under hustling clouds
May blossom shivered in the wind
and we mapped raindrops on our skin,
listening once more to tributes.

Another day, drizzle from a sky of lead
‘The Flowers o the Forest’
and a slow walk to the graveyard.

Three friends in one month
is too many to lose,
too much alone with 
the sad beauty of funerals.

The music, the words, the Word
-    He leadeth me beside the still waters,
He restoreth my soul.

Now, a walk alone,
the smell of cow parsley,
what we call hemlock.

Cold rain blues the hills,
an autumn come too soon,
hammering summer down.
There is nothing to do
but go home.