Mark this Wall

Michael Magee 

(An unsent letter form a Roman soldier posted along Hadrian's Wall)

I'm lonely here the places I didn't go to defend this place have given me a headache for twenty years or so.

The underpinnings in gorse tiny flowers of thyme grow through it, these stones have bled more blood than men and yet I'm full of hope.

Its willow weaving time, at Christmas we will decorate: celebrate Saturnalia, drink toasts to spill into the new year hope for a changing of the guard.

The men it posted here from Syria to Africa who stood as sentry through winter's outnumbered days wish you were here, and here, and here.