Mary

On a hillside
where the trees bend
in winds of all persuasions
and where the grass
in August
grows as sweet
as it will
in the centuries to come

A stone
on a river bend
reads: killed by a bull,
bears a date, bears her name.

The calf that Mary raised
and fed by hand
outgrew her kindness
till, one day in 1860,
it leaned in too close
and crushed her.

Her grave
is somewhere else;
the stone
only marks her death
in the summer grazing.

© BH, 1992/2024

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Yet another revision of a 30-year old scribble. This time a few pages of a tiny notepad.

The story, just to fill you in, is that of a 13-year-old girl crushed by a bull on grazing across the river from the house I used to live in. I had the added narrative from a local farmer - about Mary MacAdam raising the bull that killed her in 1860; how it only wanted a treat but had grown far too big.

Despite several searches in local graveyards, I never found where she is buried.