Going North

Going North by Heather Day-Melgar

As we left Glasgow

driving over the river Clyde

the hills rose up over us

rhododendron and hawthorn

Buttercup carpets

I am quiet, listening

what will the highlands show me?

The waterfall streams

down from the craggy green cliff sides

over the stone people below

each drop joining the whole

like all who have walked these lands

and passed on to the next realm

What will become of me?

What will my legacy be?

estranged from biological family

The grief runs through

and they say that grief is only love disguised

the grief of not knowing where you belong

but finding it in cathedrals of trees

and ripples on rivers

I want to hear their stories

because I am their legacy

their bloodlines flowed forward

Streaming off the basalt cliff side

continuing on down the ravine covered in yellow gorse

where the river eventually flows into the sea

We circle back again and again, the sacred spiral, the sacred knot

my Celtic lineage will carry me where my mother never could

or her mother, or her mother’s mother

they didn’t know their stories

or the words to their songs

Blessed Scottish highlands

thank you for holding me, your long lost daughter,

as I reweave myself back into the land