by William Johnston — published on October 24th, 2010
Birnam Oak
I began collecting postcards in 1989. I picked up my first ever card when I was working down at Forneth. There was a drain that ran right through the road, and a postcard of Birnam Oak came down this drain. I picked it up and my friend said, “You do the stamps, Bill, how do you not do the postcards?” So that’s what got me started.
Picture postcard of Birnam Oak entitled: The last of Birnam Wood
This Birnam Oak postcard is still special to me, with the old boy standing next to the tree. Later on I came across a card showing the place at Forneth, near Blairgowrie in the Blairgowrie Road, where I’d found my first card, and added it to my collection.
Picture postcard of Forneth, near Blairgowrie, postmarked 1913
Postmark on Forneth postcard
by Dawn Wood — published on October 19th, 2010
A see-saw bird sing-songs blue wallow
above the oaks outliving ghosts and growths –
Birnam Wood is deer-heaven – here, the brooks
they longed for, break alive from boulders,
here, a veil of bracken and sweet snow-crystals
keep walkers sliding two-steps-back from progress
and, more than the flight of a wood-pigeon away,
the Tay conspires grey with the old slate quarry,
so an ice-cream bell is left to toll silvery near the place
where, loyal to her mate of several life-spans,
an osprey at Loch of the Lowes returns to her nest.
This is the district where a barbed hook dressed
with a pheasant crest might raise an orange-bearded hackle
as a Dunkeld fly, sporting golden tinsel
and the wing of a Broen mallard, with the cheek
of a jungle cock, for reeling trout.
