Sheena Blackhall Poems

Hedgehog, the mouse-eared prickle-back breaks cover
His ploughshare nose sheers through the silky grass
His hog-snout scoops up nosegays of the wood
Mould, moistness, mushrooms, drops of moon-made dew.
...

In the middle of the night
Hear the fretful feet of vole
Fox has put a crimson sash
In the velvet side of mole.
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In the writers' farm I am free-range;
I don't want my eggs in one basket,
I want to be broody in lark's houses,
In hare's forms.
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I loved to hear him gasp with scared delight
Safe in my grasp, as we slid down the peat
Between the fir tree branches, low with cones
Close to the thundering Falls on angled feet
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I would like to tell this poem why I write,
This paper I drag my pen along,
Like a thin shadow.
The paper listens deeply.
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If you see a jumbo flying over Sumnavoe
Don't treat him like a leper or an alien UFO.
Please don't write letters to the Times, or text an air controller
If, high above Auld Reekie's roofs, he lights up a Corolla.
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It’s an October day. In Scotland, chilled by frost
The loyal robin shivers, others flee the coop.
Already Christmas tills ring up the cost
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The brass pot is suspended overhead
I must lie still, beneath the scented oil
A neck stand is supplied, a towelled bed
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Waves topple like skittles down the beach
A gecko is the room’s unpaying guest
Sinbad sailed these seas by such a moon
The old colonial bed stands on stiff legs
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God only likes nice girls and tidy boys,
But you sat down with me, un-nice, no-good
In a way that nobody's parents ever would.
...