In The Country Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.Passing Through

The purple heather’s paling, the bracken’s bronzed
The Bens are brewing a mist for the forest’s floor
And I pass like a wraith through the glens with my two companions
Treading the footsteps of travellers gone before

Tulloch, the Templar land ploughed by Nathalan
Ballaterach, lodged in the child Byron’s heart
The Quoich, where Scottish chieftains planned rebellion
This is a land where great endeavours start

The purple heather is paling, the bracken is bronzed
The Bens are brewing a mist, the fine rain spitting
And I pass like a wraith through the glens with my two companions
Treading the footsteps of travellers gone before

Lady Diana, dead in a Paris tunnel
Chaplin, King of the silent silver screen
Stevenson, master poet and storyteller
Woven in Ballochbuie’s forest scene
The pines are cool, the wildcat’s ways are secret
Sudden, a deer bolts out from the windy wet
The car brakes slam, it flees, with red heart thudding
So light the scales of life and death are set


2.Train Trip Home

The carriage hurtles on to darkening skies
A red bull paws the ground of his green empire
Bovine Napoleon. His breath looks sulphurous

Waves like steeplechasers leap the tide
Whitely rearing and plunging to the coast
A gull flies off on a highly pressing engagement
Over a cyclist, pedalling for pleasure

Rowans like blood beads spatter verge and woods
A buzzard scans a field of grain for lunch
Fast food- a rabbit take-way, its flight like fire

Wind-farms winnow the clouds on the horizon
Here and there cliffs dropp to crazy paving
Blue marbled waters sliding over deeps

In Perth, meth addicts queue up for their scripts
Their benefits, their bag of reduced shopping
Women pluck clothes from a clothesline
A sparrow hops across from peg to peg.

In the Tay, the murky undertow of currents
Shuttlecock fish from reed to reed and back
Sun shines its searchlights into Angus corries
A heron stands in the mud flats at Montrose
Like a kirk steeple. Waiting to spear a fish
A crow sits on a street lamp, feathered mugger

Through this rural idyll a ladette
F’s & C’s, too drunk to stand to pee
A girls’ day out, all thirty-ish and plastered
The WC receives her with a groan
Stonehaven under moonlight, cold and dreich
And how they drag, those final chugging miles
The train slides on across the shining river
Sparkled with stars, the darling of my city
Wearily up the dank steps from the Green
To bus, to home, to bed, to sleep, to dreams
Of the dear dead, rising from narrow graves
Walking towards me, smiling, arms outstretched.


3.Mother of Pearl

Mother of pearl
Shell with an angel’s membrane
Pink and silver sheen

4.Grey Heron

Motionless heron
Grey mist rolls off river
Heron does not stir


5.Crow’s Court Room

Black crow pleads guilty
Crimson gash is evidence
Flies clinch the verdict