Red Castle Lunan Bay.

by Bruce Clark Dick
(Forfar Angus Scotland)

Crippled, dying, red sandstone husk.
Mortally wounded through fire and age,
Once proud hunting lodge of William the Lion
Oh! What merriment you saw, what feasts you participated in,
What lavishness adorned your walls, the banners, the tapestries the weapons of war.

These days are long since gone, you sit slumped against the cold north wind, your window sockets, picked clean by man and wind, stare out onto the cold grey seas. From your lofty mound
you have seen the pass of sail to steam, from creaking wood to soulless iron.

Generations have picnicked at your feet, their lives a short breath, while you, eight hundred years old, have seen them come and go in frivolous fashions or dowdy clothes Oh! How you wish you could return to your proudest days, the court tittle-tattle, the indiscretions of Lady Beaton’s daughter, the throaty laugh of your roaring fire. The smell of roasting hog, the chattering of kitchen staff.

But those are memories, you sit hunched and decaying, keep out! Danger! Are the signs, fixed to your crumbling body, you have went from royal to leper, from aspiring touchable to low caste untouchable.
You will sit there, brooding, silent, till your ebbing life is ground to dust.

Bruce Clark Dick.