6
The fairy bridge
See the cars speeding fast and low
Along the thin, black tarmac ribbons,
Crisp laid over the rolling moors.
Hardly noticing,
Oblivious to the blur of heaped stones,
The dips and corners of bypassed histories.
Speeding around the proud, sleek corners
Leaping the old valleys left silent, shaded.
Easy, then, to miss the Fairy Bridge
Where MacLeod of Dunvegan
Found and lost his fairy wife
In a place between here and there,
Neither rock nor water, earth nor air,
A hunched road between hunched hills.
Left in sorrow,
(Impossible to span such a distinction of worlds,
Falling asleep for centuries
Or cursed with too much guiltless joy,
The dance never ending),
He returns to his empty home with a last gift:
A flag, furled against desperate times,
A promise of three victories out from despair.
Doomed to crumble, disappear in tatters,
Worm-eaten, forgotten, misplaced, tear-stained.
A thin withering, a frayed thread,
The clear glory imagined now dust,
A past that bartered its continuance
Without suspecting anything except valediction,
The clear glorious road ahead smudged with sunset storm,
A dark path abandoned by light.
The Fairy bridge,
Between time and space, here and there,
A feather touch of fame and fortune,
A moth touch of death, a kiss, a whisper,
A foot placed right, a foot placed wrong,
A slip, a sliver, a glint of gold, a refrain coded,
A yearning, a whole nation beguiled,
Mazed, lost, cast away,
(The blue distant shimmer, the smooth green hillside of freedom).
He doubts now:
Did he dream it? The long years of love and laughter,
The line and weight of beauty,
The grace of hand and fall of cloth?
And what was the cause?
What was done, what left undone,
What path unnoticed, what riddle unsolved?
What required answer not given
At the right time, the right place?
The song is: if only.
The grief of not knowing, or of knowing too late.
Gold cast away into mud, the firm, fast knot slipped.
To give and take is sacrifice,
To give the most must lose the most.
Swept away,
They have all been swept away,
By time, by foolishness, by a repayment of debts.
The land parceled, emptied,
Lorded over, an amusement for weekends,
A respite from care,
A cleared killing ground,
A desolation of aristocracies.
simonhlilly 
You command and epic sweep in a few words your elliptical sentences embed a message that conveys tropes to think by and by where you led we are the last to know yet we journey with you as the river meanders.
I am bad, I always write and to edit seems so far away, but could you edit that and to an an at the begining? Thanks
Then delete this post like a mission impossible missive.
curious that tocksin is above…that we’ve all started accumulating, no, what is that that is the opposite of erosion? aggregation? these pieces we’re letting accrue…anyway Simon, the movement of this section as enearthed or embodied those last stanzas was how do i say – kaboomey
thank you for this fine and (per tocksin) duly edited work
your writing is stunning.
Thanks for your comments. With this, as with all, there is the question in the back of my mind of how much to fill in, how much to leave. Itself is itself referring to other tales. If I also tell that tale: ” Once upon a time…” it becomes something else. Maybe then the brush becomes a photograph then a historical document then a folktale retold. Everything requires everything else to explain. But is the reader doomed to be always a thwarted detective? Or to make up their own meanings? I fall in love with a song’s lyrics then discover the words are not what I heard or do not refer even to the same subject I supposed. Make sense or make Art, maybe never both at the same time. Telling stories, glimmer of light, peripheral movement, on the tip of the tongue. Abstracted, abstruse, abnegated, annoying. What does the warm sea mean? Just wallow in it! So I hope this thread was followed sufficiently to avoid the cow-headed bully of logic that lurks centrewise in the grey-white matter of the brain….or there always is the option of copious footnotes, like Shakespeare school editions ( always like the footnotes page the best, so much inconsequential, interesting facts….)
That is so beautiful.