The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Judith McCombs

After the Skirmish in the Snowy Field, Patrick McKommie Asks

On 28 January 1673, Chief M’Comie Mor’s heir and next-best son were killed by the Farquarsons, whose Chief was killed by M’Comie Mor’s party. A plaque marks the place—still known as M’Comie’s Field—near Forfar, Angus, Scotland.

What use are seer’s gifts? Of course I saw

The chase, the close, our riders strive and fall,

Their raiders strike and fall. I strove to see

Who luckless flinched, whose skill and bravery—

This happened many times, these feuding years

When Canlochan’s woods were neither ours, nor theirs.

Ours by purchase, under Cromwell’s law;

Theirs, when the seller’s King upended laws.

Was it my spells and prayers that steeled our clan

To fell the worst of the marauding Farquharsons?

Did their spells, or chance, in that field of snow-slick stones,

Bring down our Chief’s two brave, outnumbered sons?

Still always in my seeing eye it seems

Canlochan’s woods were green: all seeds released

In swaying leaf, green tangles overhead—

But underfoot the trampled, seeping red.