Of Witch Girls & Midgies (28 Poems) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.Blessings
May kindness be the star that lights you home
May the rice gods see your bowl is never empty
May you walk with the sounds of the song thrush in your ears
May the dragon clouds on the mountain keep you safe.


2.After-Shocks
When I disembarked from the ship, an aftershock,
For some time even the land appeared to rock

When my son wed, a most auspicious week
Quite unaccountably, my eyes began to leak


3.Glen inhabitants
Leaves and wind are plaintive as harpist's strings
The day's small gnats fly off on see-through wings

The skimmed stone falls to the loch's cool bed
Wedded to silence by three rings of waves
Under the brooding bulk of the drowned Ben

A tiny note from a thrush's diamond beak
Echoes crystal pure in the evening glen


4.Moon-Struck
The same whole moon that fills my upturned eyes
Strikes polar fire in Iceland's flinty face
Watches the tiger's leap, the Congo's dark
The croaking frog in his lily-bellied place

Drip, drip, drip the terrible tears trip down
The moon's pale cheeks, lamenting his alien state

Lonely and liverish, the moon's set in his ways
Dead in the heavens, dead as a poisoned fish


5.Advice his Mother gave him
Always clean your plate
Think of the starving Chinee

Why not spin my plate like a juggler?
Why not smash my plate like a Greek?
Why not paint a bridge and willow on the plate
Like a delicate Japanee?

Touching yourself is sinful and brings shame
People who masturbate go mad or blind
Hair grows on the palms of their hands

Was the man with the white stick
One of the shameless ones?

Was John Clare, locked in his head
One of the nameless ones?

He looked at his palms and imagined
Forests of follicles


6.A Mother's Gifts
I asked her to let me run barefoot
She gave me sensible shoes

I asked for paints like the rainbow
She gave me a book of sums

I asked for fabulous journeys
She tethered the world to a house

I begged her to love me the best,
She made me share

I asked her for joy and fun
She gave me guilt and shame

Nothing I asked for she gave me,
Her final gift was honesty, bitter and true


7.Rationed
I was a baby boomer
Born two years on
From the end of Hitler's war

Potatoes and bread, still rationed
Petrol, sweets and sugar in short supply

A time of relief and thrift
Love of a kind, doled out in restricted doses
Cupboards locked with stockpiled joy and excess

When, at last, the larders were unlocked
The joy was damp and mouldy
Well past its sell-by date


8.Ballerina Haiku
Wirms spin silk for pumps
She dances briefly, tiptoed
Wirms unpick her shroud


9.The Poppy
Poppy, like a tired whore
Flounces her flamenco skirts
Afghan poppy at your core
Half of all the world's hurts

Robbing children of their youth
Deadly bloom of evil trade
Poppy like a tired whore
A pox on you, and ills you've made


10.The Witch Girl
Long long, when she was flesh and blood
And knew the power of passion's flood
She could bewitch men at a whim
They called her witch and named her Sin

That way she had with man and beast
Outcast by neighbour, kin and priest
The river took her. A dark shroud
And held her like a fallen cloud
And three times round she turned around
And in the tarn, the witch-girl drowned

But such a freeborn one is meant
To linger, like a teasing scent


11.On a Vegan Retreat
I come to discipline resigned
With good intentions at the start
The chains of samsara to bind

The principles I choose, enshrined
By bodhisattvas who impart
A way of life both calm and kind


All chants and rituals are designed
To navigate life's troubled chart
To clear a path through briers entwined

I close my eyes. I'm breathing blind
Trying to tame the thoughts that dart
Across my brain from past's back wynd

Daily on seeds and plants I've dined
Peanuts with leek and mushroom tart
Carrots and lentils, unrefined

I meditate on bacon rind
Frailty upsets the apple cart
For lamb and salmon, how I've pined

I try to elevate my mind
I try to purify my heart
To leave base instincts far behind
But all I seem to do is fart


12.A Fragmented Story
A rolling stone in Siberia was kicked by a Cossack's horse
The snow promised better horizons, a blue blanket

A small dark cave curled up like a bear full of winter
A gaunt grey heron pooled in sunlight, poised over a ripple

Where a serpent eats its tail
A horse plods wearily on behind its master

Blinkered by harness and custom
We chew the bit of language

Storming out to play I climbed the mountains
With their ears full of rubble and stones

And nobody said that Age
Kicks Life in the gut like a burst sack
Making a wreck of your lovely springtime idylls


13.A Poem of Broken Shards
A swinging gate
A shell's throat
A boat with muffled oars

Three voices of grief and wisdom
The skin of the western wind

A purse of willows' warnings
A bag of ravens' secrets

A harp of thrush's ribs
The warmth left behind in the hare's form

The courage to take the road
Where the toad's eyes shine


14.The Midgie
A midgie crawling up my nose
Expired in the phlegm
And so, enountering the void
He learned the bliss of Zen


15.Balquhidder in June
Blue sky and russet squirrel. Mosaic of fur and cloud
Birch trees sway their wrists. A swallow sings on a wire

Summer winds rattle the greenhouse. Plants retreat from the air's bite
Robin's wings are two pressed leaves of feathers

Broom glows on the bank, a burst of sunbeams
Popping out from the rowan, a candyfloss of flowers


16.Winter Haiku
December evening
Drunk girl falls in the gutter
Equal rights for women


17.Burning Sand
How the hot sun burns!
Truck in a sandy city
Blows three children up


18.Autumn Cough
Autumn rakes my lungs
Green leaves turn yellow
Bright flags of decay


19.Writer's Block, Unblocked
So there he was, like a goat tied to a pole
Round and round in a groove turning into a hole
Till at three am the big idea arrived
Like a wee excited dog, shouting
‘Shake a leg get up and write me down! '


20.Mr Squirrel
Mr Squirrel with pouncy paws
Doesn't obey the pine tree's laws
Not for him the stand and be still
He's off like wildfire over the hill


21.A Sliver of June
An orange insect, unannounced, arrives
Ragged prayer flags wilt in midgied heat
This is a slice of happiness from June
A sheep is bleating its note to a gray stone

Ragged prayer flags wilt in midgied heat
Rabbits' marbles interest passing flies
A sheep is bleating its note to a gray stone
Far and above the scudding clouds cast shadows

Rabbits' marbles interest passing flies
Chopped wheels of carrots simmer in the pan
Far and above the scudding clouds cast shadows
The shrine room echoes to the sound of om

Chopped wheels of carrots simmer in the pan
An orange insect, unannounced, arrives
The shrine room echoes to the sound of om
This is a slice of happiness from June


22.Nettles
Nettles I wish to thank you
This week I ate your sisters
So tasty, so tender!


23.Ruby, the Rubislaw Quarry Monster: A Bairn-Tale
There's a hole that could hold the Titanic
Stay away if you're wise from this lair
For the rain filled it up like a bath tub
And nobody knows what's down there

Old trolleys and bikes, granite tool works
Ancient beds, the occasional lorry
And a very mysterious creature
Called Ruby, the Queen of the quarry

She likes to creep out for adventures
But she's secretive, furtive and shy
And the marvellous thing about Ruby
She's too quick to be seen by the eye

You might catch a twitch of a whisker
The scrape of a heel or a claw
The swish of her wee monster sporran
A wheech of a tail or a paw

In Januar, at the New Marcliffe
Where the haggis is piped in with state
In the midst of the annual Burns Supper
Ruby cleared all the neeps from the plate

In Februar, feeling romantic
To King's College she secretly sped
Dabbed her eyes with the tail of her hanky
As the groom and his dearie were wed

In March, waking up feeling chirpy
She gave a bit skip and a dance
She clambered up out of the quarry
To view Union Street's silver expanse

Though the quarry is lovely for swimming
There are times that she yearns for the sun
In April she went to Balmoral
In her joggers to join in the run

Her at-home month is May, when the city
Celebrates all her quarry has made
The buildings, the bridges the statues
All the glories of the granite trade

There's nothing like venison burgers
To bring Ruby up at the trot
In June, Hazlehead is a riot
Of rowies and soup, steaming hot
At the Aberdeen games, where the heavies
Toss cabers like candy-floss sticks
And there's hairy-legged tourists in tartan
Wearing kilts, taking snapshots and pics

At the foot of the quarry are golf clubs
Ruby's good…she'd make Sean Connery toast
In a match, so she practises putting
At Mr Trump's course on the coast
In August…where better than Fittie?
Where Scotty dogs bowf on the sands
And the toddlers in buggies are chortling
With ice-cream melting over their hands

Autumn's near…in the sky of an evening
There's a hint of the Northern Lights
As the oil exhibition is opening
Ruby's off up to Dyce for the flights

Here she likes to imagine she's jetting
Off to Texas or Dallas or Rome
But she knows, though a holiday's pleasant
It's always a joy to come home

Halloween is the month of the witches
At the foot of the quarry's a broom
So October's her mont h to go ghosting
To Fyvie, she flies: VA-VA-VROOM

Full of bloodstains and bloodcurdling stories
Of murders and ladies of green
Fyvie castle's the place to be frightened
When the moon casts its eeriest sheen

November is stormy and chilly
To her Majesty's Theatre she's gone
To sit in the Gods eating toffees
When the pantomime camel comes on

Swinging fireballs around at Stonehaven
In December, while eating black bun
For the monster of Rubislaw Quarry
That's almost another year done

Then the ships out at sea fire their rockets
As she dives like a great Noah's Ark
To the bottom of Rubislaw Quarry
With its secrets all hidden and dark


24.Callander, Easter 2012
A stand of daffodils out-Wordsworths Wordsworth
Their trumpets blowing golden tremeloes

Cats appear on perches, magically
And disappear on silent, padded paws

Ker-plunk, an after-frog bestirs the pool
A hen lolls on its back, its wings akimbo
Closing its beady eyes in henny Heaven
Enjoying its morning dust bath in the sun
Like Cleopatra, dunked in asses' milk


25.Remember
Remember the day our father died
Like a tired old war horse, dropped in its dutiful tracks?
His hand stretched out to the unknowable…

Remember our mother in her bitter chair
Renouncing love and warmth, slowly
Morphing into dementia, inconsolable?

Remember the grief, the grave, the open lair
The world turned inside out, turned bleak and bare
Remember the….But how could you?
As usual, you weren't there.


26.Vanished
A swift flew into the space between two clouds
Then vanished like the mandolin I lost
Like my friend who'd eaten the Blarney Stone
And washed it down with a flagon of Glenmorangie
Like the flute-man walking his tune across the horizon
Like the heartbeat of a home where love has died


27.Blue Boat
A blue boat sits on the loch
A painted island

The only traffic's a crow
Crossing a cloud

Two wrens shuffle
A pack of rustling leaves


28.In the Temple of the Air
Six books unopened on a coffee table
Two sliced ripe lemons glistening on a plate
A soup of insects hatching in a pond
A vixen sniffing round a compost heap
A cuckoo hijacking a thrush's nest
A gate that opens on a winding path