Afton Mountain Piper

A warm summer day and the downhill run 

from Staunton home, and there he stood

in Highland array at the overlook, 

bag full and chanter to his lips.

A private moment, it seemed,

else we would have stopped

to listen, perhaps to chat

if he had a mind to.

But he was intent on his piping, 

facing east across the valley—

piping, one might think,

to immigrant family

who settled these hills,

tracing in his mind an unseen path

from a lowland port westward

among the glens and across these icy streams.

A mountain people before they came,

born in rocky crags stretching beneath the sea

to these selfsame Appalachian hills—

now home in ways they knew and didn’t know.

And what of this does the piper ken?

Does he pipe back two hundred years

to an ancestor Barclay or Black,

McLean or McIntosh, who built here and farmed

the land below?

Or does something stir deeper in his blood

tying him to another place and time,

and so he stands today on a new Afton

far, far this side of home, 

oblivious to the interstate

and growl of traffic and curious stares,

as alone as a man can be heart-deep among his kin,

piping to a distant land?

              © David Black, 2015

Bagpiper at Loch Garry
Photo by Bleiglass
from Wikimedia Commons