The Pike

Amidst a snarl of willow root,
It lay in wait, in ambush,
Motionless, yet in motion,
Moving as imperceptibly as stars,
Drift across the face of night,
Delicate in its silver armour,
As that of the Lorica Squamata
Worn by Ceaser’s praetorians,
In Romes lost Ninth Legion,
Who vanished into mist and murk,
Of the wild Caledonian mountains,
Whose peaks ranged all around me,
And into the annals of infamy,
As ghosts glimpsed only rarely,
So arrogant in its demeanour,
Uncaring of my rapt attention,
Fearing only the oldest ghillies,
Who would hunt only the hunters,
Usurping them with their wiles,
Of hook and feathers, deftly woven,
Slipping so softly, sensuously,
Slick within the slipstream,
Graceful in each curl of current,
In the trap of shade and light,
It had set beside the river bank.

As golden sun beams gashed,
The crystal running waters,
Which rushed on rocks and gravel,
From the high moors overhead,
Down into the drowsy valley,
They would dazzle for a second,
With their fey lucent glamour,
Each and every wanderer,
Which went within its sanctum,
And as a warrior upon a battlefield,
So cunning, as if almost human,
It calculated with cruel reason,
Each time it struck and killed,
Seeming to exult in the savagery,
As a Roman reborn, delighting in death.


I watched the sacred ceremony,
Rituals of life and death,
Lightnings flash and stab,
The witcheries of its work,
Each sudden blush of blood,
As if from a gladius slash,
Or a ballista bolt, piercing,
The water, I watched them all,
The killings and the cull,
Until the hours of a whole day,
Had fled as if from a foe,
And its had its fill of kills,
Then with a flick of tail,
It swiftly fled into the flow,
Returning to its wild empire,
As it hunted the oldest of roads.