[in 1864]

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

in 1864 two sons of soil received land here
under the new land reform
which saw this land being given back to this, its people,
who has been here for no one knows how long
no one remembers what was here before
though, by the spring, there’s a story of an old man
and his hut
whose cold hearth my grandad unearthed by chance
their names are almost lost now
but the land, the land remembers the agony
and the ancient paths and the generational curses
of those who were left no choice but to graze the green
clearly the mountain remembers
and has beckoned its people for millennia now
spinning stories and springing this cold stream around my toes
and sprouting these tall fir trees
among which i remember a childhood