Midnight Ravens

A scuffed brown shoe sat forlornly by the blade of the shovel. Its lace, despite the violence, was still neatly tied by way of a carefully knotted bow.

He looked about him into the darkness. It was nothing more he wanted than to take back the actions of his exertions. All around him was still and calm, and the dead of night mocked him for his weakness. The frenzied shovelling left only a small uneven mound of earth to betray the hiding of the divils work beneath.

It was but a small trickle of earth that fought a losing battle against gravity, as it made its way towards a final resting place beneath the broken turf. A dried leaf hanging by the silken guilt of many a spider's thread. Left, right, back and straight to a hell, the scratching hands beneath the sod, as midnight ravens came to dance.

It was death, and only the lurid glow of a waxy moon betrayed the fear behind his eyes. Already a merciless haund gripped at his heart as the fear was replaced by a dull acknowledgement of fate. A cruel mistress it was, and one that would visit him often in the darkest of hours for many nights to come.

A pendulum swung over him for years, and many beautiful things turned to that of the ugliness of guilt about him. The blackest shadows of death’s cloaked mantle engulfed his veins with ice. It was to be a lifetime of regret that lay ahead afore the boy himself. He semi-existed in a half world where time stood still, and the years ground down like that of blunted cogs upon an anvil of despair.

They came from afar to see the final calling of the sod. Not a single horse with blackened brass to pull a coach resplendent of the dead. No glorious breath to waft from autumn’s equine mouth. No cobbled striking hooves to mark the beat as we marched along to the sounding of the end. Not one flying column marched behind the single tinker’s cart.

The lone frailties of the collector’s man had long since gone. The bone of my bones, the flesh of my flesh. Fourteen years nurtured in Glasgow's murderous vat, yet never to see or feel the sweetened ripened taste of an older age.

Like waxen mannequins, they stood before the mourners, an epitome of emptiness.We sang the songs that fiddlers love to play. Like rainbow contrasts, joy and sorrow, grace and sin, life and death, the earth took back its balance of men. No more the ravens call his name. Birds fly on paper wings while auld men cry as they mourn beside the violin.

Blood stains easily the wringing of the haunds, as they of innocent lives beg for salvation fae an invisibility of many a hidden god.