The Gaelic Chapel, Cromarty

By Gordon MacLellan

A hilltop of monuments

Of names remembered, recited, saluted.

A crumbling church,

Roofless,

Bricked up windows,

A congregation of elder and brambles.

Trace the line of a lost stair,

The rafters of a lost balcony

The frame of a lost door.

The bell still hangs,

Rusting in its tower,

No rope now to pull,

No peal to sound,

No faithful to call to prayer.

But a snowfall of cherry blossom drifts,

Confetti from this season’s wedding,

Where a choir of birds sang

The May lovers to a buttercup altar

And a dandelion throne.

The gates of walled tombs are rusted open

Dens now for the adventurous,

Retreats for adolescent evenings.

Graves settle awkwardly,

Slabs slipping,

Growing moss and sprouting lichen

Are the dead here forgotten?

As forsaken as their church?

But for me, I would rather

My tilted grave was overwhelmed with ivy

Or that my blood and festering bones

Fed that squat, brooding

Bristling holly with its berries,

Or my Self was reborn in that cherry,

Than stood neat and well-trimmed

In some managed cosmopolitan order.

Gordon is a storyteller and artist based in Buxton, Derbyshire, UK. As “Creeping Toad”, he works with groups to find ways of celebrating the relationships between people, places and wildlife. Recent work has included the Orkney Storytelling Festival, Nairn Book and Arts Festival, Buxton Festival Fringe and Buxton Museum and Art Gallery. 

Publications include Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch (Creeping Toad, 2024) and Waiting for the Snow (Creeping Toad, 2024) Sacred Animals (Green Magic Publishing, 2023), Old Stones And Ancient Bones (Creeping Toad, 2015), Homecoming #1, #2 and magazine pieces

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Website: www.creepingtoad.com

Blog: creepingtoad.blogspot.com

Social media: @creepingtoad