The rotten thing is after you’ve been pushed around

so often over the years, moved near the gate

for visitor convenience, moved near Flora MacDonald

in effort to have all brave ones united,

not scattered here and there like in life,

and the current whether or not to keep you safe

in a museum, I can’t be sure you mark the spot

the one you represent is buried: Angus of the Storms.

It shouldn’t matter, but he was a knight in life

as you are in stone and we’ve run out of knights.

Is this where you belong? And were you really

that brave? Didn’t you come home nervous

from war and have bad dreams loaded

with sobbing children and dead innocent sleep?

Didn’t the tinkle of a far off cow bell though faint

explode you out of sleep?

Or were you always this resolute, the way you look now

on this slab flat in the grass, and were you always this

noble and aloof, paying no attention

to rain that pools in your eyes?

I knew a man so brave he flew extra missions

because he believed in the war. We called him

Screwy Jew, and his odds stretched thin until

one day he exploded into fine sand and fell

five miles in a trillion leisurely trails

no one cared to trace. Do you know him now?

Is he one of you? I imagine you asking for trouble

wherever you rode and cowardly peasants like me

moving out of your way. And I imagine you dead

on a beach and gulls collected to shake

your blood from drying too fast in the sun.

That was a great moment. We went on ploughing.

You here smug in blue green stone relief

may represent no one. If you were really that small

and took off your mail, put down your sword

and shield, I’d break your goddamn puny arms, I’d

knee you in the balls, I’d kick your ass north

all the way to the pole. They wouldn’t carve me in stone,

nor call me Dick of the Storms. Something right goes wrong

with brutality when it loses history and style.

These days, however many dragons we kill

we are sand falling home

leaving no trail.