KATHLEEN JAMIE: Creative Scotland Residency, 2014

Atlantic Sonnetse
photograph: Lucy Conway

 

(1) blackie

That blackbird in the briar
……………….by the outfield dyke
doesn’t know he’s born,
……….doesn’t know he’s praise and part
of this spring day,
……………….eastern Atlantic style –

from his yellow beak his song falls
………………..to the first yellow celandines,
his throat patters, with a yellow claw
he scratches his left lug
………………..without interrupting his tune…
soon the haar will burn off,
revealing the far-off mountains
………………..dressed in Easter snow, and the sea..
but for now the world’s the blackbird’s
…………………………till suddenly he’s flown.

 

(2) light

For too long I haven’t
……………………….glanced at the sea
……………………………….– fully ten minutes!
So there it is: horizon
shining like a magic key
and here and there a breaking wave
……………………….like a white gable,
a  whinny of spume at the cliff-foot…,
……….The sky’s
inexpressible, clouds comb and drift,
all with their different silences…

And here’s a squall coming in from the Hebrides
a smudge of rainbow
………………..like a shopping bag
……………………..carried in her right hand.

 

(3) stone

Thon earthfast boulder by the bothy door,
taller than a man and
………………..thrice as broad and
older than everyone put together –

stood there in his boots of moss
like he’s just this very hour
………………..come down the brae

– a chapman peddling bracken-besoms,
lichen-saucers
a few lampwicks of grass-

I open the door, though he gives no hawker’s cry-
just stands, as he has for long enough –
 
………………………………….and aye will.

 

(4) lighthouse

As good a climb as any,
………..the hill behind the bothy  –
a dry burn, a basalt knuckle
………..like a throne
– if you care to be enthroned –
among dry bracken shivering,
…………………….a wheen sheep.

The day’s done; the Western Isles
lie dusty in the near-dusk,
and soon the Scalpay lighthouse
will send out its extravagant
three-every-twenty-seconds flash
………………….like a playboy signing cheques.

 

(5) star

I’m waiting for the star to rise
……………………………..perhaps a planet
that tangles itself in the still leafless branches
of the sycamore
framed by the smallest window.

and appears, caught in that dark cage
to flutter and tremble
………………like thon wagtail,
mind? trapped in a lobster-creel
………………on the pier at Elgol

till the fisherman’s big hand reached in,
and sent it twittering on its way,

I read by candlelight, on a wax
-splattered pine table,
keeping half an eye out for that star.

 

photograph: Jonny Barrington