Today the boys came home..
horned and hairy they have spent the summer pastured for tourists at Newtonmore’s Folk Park, celebrating bygone Highland ways..
They wander free now over the farm,
gazing quizzically
at guests – my visitors – who stare back, nonplussed
at these animals stating a claim equal to theirs.
Looking for a hardstanding to feed them on,
I remember the cobbles beneath the greened floor of the ruined cottages.
With their heads down to the dark-grain nuts,
they mimic the beasts long gone
from that same place..
just as we mimic our kind
on this old land.
