Where wind washes overBen Nevis  

The piper climbs up high, toward the sky

Close to heaven, close to her

Rain shadows, light but not love

Times tendrils cling, to his shoulders as he climbs on up the great pass 

 Winters wind still carries, Celtic cries for the lost lass

He climbs to remember, on this cold November

Higher and higher, rain swirls round; as a sharp sudden wind collects the shades of grey

Tartan clad, clan colors cover, his burdened back   

Nothing could keep him from her on this day

Treading where his brothers have, to protect their land

Where they fought together, the everyman, from every clan.

Toward the top, the weather worsens

In the pipers head he hears the Fathers words

Spoken by his fathers Gaelic tongue   

Words that lead a man, words that make a Scotsman

She was everything to the lonesome piper’s heart, so forlorn

She was the original Flower of Scotland, before her sheep were shorn

The piper stops, stands atop his great land, Scotland

Dark grows the sky-the air has frozen in time cloaked in a colorless grey

Fingers numb, the piper holds the chanter firm… hand and thumb

Lips chap and stiff, the bag he lifts, and fills the pipes with Falkirk’s fire

The pipers tune, salivating and hungry for bedlam, can no longer rest inside,

Wind, Ice, Fog, it will be heard all the way to Ballynahone Bog.

Broad chest, each breath, sounds the drone

Though she can not be there the piper is at home.

Standing heels together, cheeks red, lips tight, drone steadily as time, eyes wild…

Pipes wail! Piercing parliament’s walls, reaching the Northern shores of their Mother Erin

The Flower is here once again,

Heard from the highest wee bit hill and the greenest glen, calling her children home

For her he plays, this cold November day

She rests not in the ground, but blooms, in her children’s hearts she forever lays.