vallum

walls and ditches
encircled sanctums
of holy ground
the profane
kept at a distance
by borrowed
earthworks

stakes in the sod
boundaries between
the secular and the divine
dividing prayer and worship
from the hard-singing world
of predator and prey

ramparts above
the common mud
lines and mounds
separating us all

the embattlements
of civilization against wildness
whose palisades align us
where we fall out or in
where there is death
to difference
to grace and honour
among the savage whins
where the bodies lie
in an eternity
of shame

© BH, 2022

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The word ‘vallum’ taken from an Instagram post by rhowapa illustrated with a plaque on a Historic Scotland ruin…

I thought it worthy of some work. And, yes, so it was. Divisions of the divine from the secular, the military and the subjugated… So many boundaries and the holy and the profane borrowing from one another. What’s not to like?