Something a little different! On Thursday I visited Langholm, a town in Dumfries and Galloway. In one of my lives I am a student studying Sustainable Development, and this semester's subject is land reform. Ownership of the land of Scotland is concentrated in relatively few hands, and there has been a movement, especially in the Highlands and Islands, for communities to acquire their own land. The Langholm Initiative has taken this up for Langholm Moor. So I went for a visit, and produced some verse. Here is how the land looks:
Slash the plastic tube,
Banish it from the moor:
Let the sapling swell free.
As the native broadleaves
Oust Sitka’s dark monoculture
Let many cultures thrive.
As the mature tree, the sapling,
And the seedling burgeon
Let them draw squirrel and marten home.
As blue and broun gled
Vee over the moorland
Let them harry unharried.
Husbanding the rainfall,
Constraining the burns
Let the peat replenish itself.
Under the eye of heaven
Guarded by new guardians
Let Langholm Moor flourish!
https://www.langholminitiative.org.uk/
