Strongylocentrotus Purpuratus Since we met over that weak latté that you claimed was too strong and I indulged in one excellently crisp croissant of which you ate half without my permission in Spitalfields where Guatamalan coffee beans dress the shelves of Crispin’s where they do the best eggs and you can’t unhear City gents loudly …
The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron …
Prayer Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will …
Three Dollars Cash Three dollars cash For a pair of catalog shoes Was what the midwife charged My mama For bringing me. “We wasn’t so country then,” says Mom, “You being the last one— And we couldn’t, like We done When she brought your Brother, Send her out to the Pen And let her pick …
Jimmy Five Daughters 1912 baby born third wean first boy tae Isabella Lochhead David Quarrell Old Rutherglen Road Tenement Gorbals trams trundled past as baby arrived as he came into the world survival tenuous given mortality figures of that time. survive wee jimmy did my father Jimmy Five Daughters think he be proud of his …
Three poems by Emily Dickinson 346 “Hope” is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all— And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard— And sore must be the storm— That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm— I’ve heard it in the …
Please Call Me By My True Names Do not say that I will depart tomorrow – because even today I still arrive. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be …
With many thanks to Cicely Gill for letting us publish her poem here which she originally posted, together with the following words, on social media pages last month. Cicely is a poet and writer who lives on Arran. What’s on my mind? Well BLM of course. I want to share with you a poem I …
This month we bring you the last of the poems we received during April and May, in an email exchange that coincided with the start of lockdown. The poems have kept coming over the past few weeks, and capture a lovely glimpse into people’s moments of reflection during this period. Some people have been inspired …
PRAYERS IN RECIPES By Diana Dodd, May 2020 In tribute to our late father, Ted Dodd (died 1995) and mother, Edith Dodd (died 1967). My sister has been clearing out and found our father’s prayers as an Elder for the Church of Scotland written between 1968 and 1973, inside a 1950s Cookery Book and Home …