The Colors that Define Me

Dedication

On Mother’s Day, for my mother in her 97th year still telling stories of her mother, each proudly a Cameron and Highlander. The strongest, most vital, and most remarkable women I have ever known.

Tartan, for three millennia, the cloth that binds one

Generation to the next, the next, and the next.

I, small tyke, when she introduced “Let Us Unite”,

Lochiel’s leadership, eight hundred brave cousins.

My imaginations - Culloden, Prestonpans,

Forebears, Pict chiefs leading crofters, herders, fishers.

She regales with true giants, not fairy tales,

Immense creatures, stature dwarfed only by courage.

Highlanders bound one to another via clann;

Gaelic for “children”, vital word in every tongue.

Tartan, colored chaos, neatly checkerboarded,

Proclaiming “I am this, not that; live here, not there”.

Dreams of freedom and expulsion of usurpers.

But wars tear apart flesh, lives, families, nations.

Winners define reparations or punishment.

Invent their histories of right, who’s on God’s side.

My kinsmen’s kilts crusted in the dull hue of red-brown,

Each thread, identical, boggy mud and dried blood.

Achnacarry’s fir, a fire of orange and black.

Centuries reduced to gray ash by Cornwallis.

Tartan patchwork on Culloden moor, each of 358 dead

With kilts like mine - indigo, white, set in scarlet.

Victims of success, British face a thousand fears.

Nightmares of Highland ferocity plaid-clad.

The screaming crack of mail ripped by Lochaber axe.

Flesh torn by glimmering sword, pike through horse’s heart.

In defeat, kilts and arisard, banned and buried,

Inept eradication of Highland culture.

Likewise, my infamous, villainous ancestors

Sent afloat, expelled from Alba to New Scotia.

Clan, respect, honor, oath, strength, mettle. Paramount.

Tartan, a single thread of sheep’s wool is nothing;

Its fulfillment the dye; warp, and weft on the loom.

The truths, handed down, shape meanings of belonging,

Of the courage and strength to uproot, start anew,

Of measuring worth in values not property,

Of appreciating the wisdom of the ancients.

My journey from wide-eyed son, imagining

Kilted valor, to father, grandfather, greater,

Watching sons and grandchildren don plaid regalia,

Says pursuit of happiness is fulfilled by clann.

Tartan, for three millennia, the cloth that binds one

Generation to the next, the next, and the next.