Snippets From A Life Poem by Sheena Blackhall

In a city winter
Myself and a witnessing tree
Stood outside the houseI was brought up in
Watching the snow fall softly

Somewhere, as always, there would be an auto wreck
Somewhere as always, there would a Babel
Of non-communication
Somewhere as always, the blood of a stranger
Spreads on the pavement behind a pub

In the Book of Blues
I have noted my childhood whispers
Where chills and fevers brewed behind bedroom walls

In dreams the storm clouds, called out
Come In
In books, cosmopolitan greetings stretched out welcomes
In my Book of Hours, my sketch book of the heart,
I was a dumb instrument. Art was my Fervent Gospel

Grown older my journey to love
Led to the Land of Unkindness
Listener!The roses had thorns
Something ugly whimpered in the reeds

Now I have Meditations for any Emergency
Mind Breaths, with Mountain Intervals
Brushing the sky: Balquhidder, Bennachie, and Lochnagar

No thanks, ocean, nothing for me today
I am a Highland creature
Welcome, midnight owl
Welcome Silent Days

In the Enormous Roomof yesterday
(70 years and counting)
There's a blue guitar
There's a marble stag
There's a Museum of lost dreams



At the end of my mind
Beyond the Seven Seas
Beyond the Song of Amergin
Beyond the Singing Bowls
Beyond the Story-Tellers
Beyond the tears of Cernunnos
A winding stair leads to a dead son
And the shrouded faces of ancestors