Crannog Woman Poem by Sheena Blackhall

You can be killed by wolf or man

Lightning, childbirth, fever,
Are also death-bringers

I look from the crannog
Over the peaty waters of the loch
The Lady Moon is wearing her white hood

Mice squeak in the roof-reeds
Rats scratch at the hazel stems
Of the crannog’s woven walls

My thoughts are like dark canoes
Circling and restless

Today I pounded grain
And helped a new-killed fox
From its coat of fur

On the shore, I gathered berries

The stone lay there like an egg laid by a storm
Now it nestles in my hand
As did the heart I plucked from the hare
After its blood spilled on the dewy grass

I sit by the fire and carve it,
Chipping away at the blank face of nothing
I give it knobs and spirals, a sense of rhythm

It rests my mind, this time of pattern-play

The cunning man has looked into the future
Mine is short and dark.

I shall throw the stone back to the field
My little worry-ball, my small tamed rock