Now follows the Dark Time... for Samhuinn, a poem from ten years ago

Samhuinn / Winternights

Now follows the dark time,

grey stones, night’s chill falling,

owls, flower-faced, calling

winter and old friends

As wind gathers, rustling

dry dead flowers from heather,

rattling broom-seeds; shifting

now, between the worlds, wait,

between year and season,

between known and unknown,

turnings, change, year’s end.

Harvest made, we gather,

shape and sort, assemble

sift tales of our season

spun from joy or sadness

crafting song and legend

stories to attend

On the cairn, leaves new-spread,

new-dead, over long-dead

bones in barrow bearing

stories of the years past

living tales and sped

Our deeds, their rememberings,

merging here, our beings,

self or legend; lives turn,

seed to earth our year’s work

wait the new year’s growing,

join our hopes ahead

So, now, comes the wanderer,

worlds-walking, by barrow,

stone, or stream, or city

hearing song and story

hoarding deed and meaning

words that lie in wyrd

(© J Blain, 2005)

Dundee, for my father: rememberings from around four years old

We walked, those times in my remembering, into

the town, a mile or so, a slow walk

for a young child tripping on sandalled feet,

stones going into the shoes;

and the dust in Princes Street blew into my eyes,

so a hankie was needed, and sometimes spit.

But then, the toun, the streets, and you would say

how the Seagait and the Murraygait cam aboot

and the Cowgate wi the coos coming intae the toun

frae Angus to merkat; then the city square,

Boots' corner and Monck's lodging, with the old toun,

the kirks, the steeple, Overgait, and scents of foods

and people, and smoke too, and gaun doun the hill tae

docks, the arch, with swing bridge and the walking

among salt breezes, with stories of the harbour.

And the Fifie, oh the Fifie! and the trip for a day

and the lifebelts, rings that so teased imagining;

going there and back, and the engine's sound,

beside that bridge of fear and exaltation,

with joy of the return, tired and expectant

of a bus ride home.

Or maybe into Tally Street's hotel,

'Imperial', they called it, friends who ran it;

by Barrack Street and through the ghoulful Howff

to where you, my Dad, worked - with a wondrous door,
and that lift that the small child marvelled at; then
by statues at the Albert Institute

and by the school that I would go to,

when I was bigger.

Trying to not sleep on the bus,

Stumbling up the street to home,

home, home, home,

Sleep.