Sheena Blackhall Poems

On Monday, it was too late for visitors to call
The squirrels were asleep in their squirrely homes

On Tuesday, I sat by the river, on a stone which said
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We're haein Sna the Day

‘We're haein sna the day, ' said the wumman
Like the weather wis a menu written doon
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Visit to a Show Farm

Animals and public are separated by a Berlin wall
We are warned to sanitize our hands, for our own protection
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I might have been the favourite wife
Of the Emperor Valerian

I'm so corybantic
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Paris weeps for Her Lady
Nine centuries up in smoke
Flames race 300 feet to the spire's tip
The stonework stares in horror, charred and scarred
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Art has jumped from the easel, the frame, the wall
It has spilled into the street
It is climbing a Jacob's ladder of inspiration
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Thoughts on the Douaumont Ossuary, VE day,2020
Tonight, on VE day, in Douaumont,
The lantern will shine out across the dead
The ossuary up-gathered from Verdun's
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Fleeing from pogroms, Jews seek a new start
(paying the passage breaks families apart)
Russian, Slav, Greek, Pole, Italian and Turk
Scots, English, Irish go, all seeking work
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Surgical gloves are as precious as Indian tigers
Apartments smell of sweaty dogs, stale socks
Vending machines are unexploded bombs
Masked strangers exercise in the rain
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In 1621, William Alexander,1st Earl of Stirling, was granted permission by King James VI of Scotland and I of England to establish a settlement in Acadian Canada. James VI and I was the son of Mary Queen of Scots. He became King of England after the death of Queen Elizabeth I.The new settlement was called 'Nova Scotia' - New Scotland.


Rùm, is an island of the Inner Hebrides,
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