Winner of the unpublished poets section of the Dunedin UNESCO Robert Burns Poetry Competition 2021

Glimmerings, 1856-1920

Foraging near the coves of Culzean
We sensed the bones of bears and saints
Lying in darkness with the fairies
Glowing like moon jellies
Washed up on the beach after rain.

We tried to learn the Sylvan names
The bay children taught us with rhymes and games,
Rambling home past burns and byres
Our baskets dripping with samphire.

In turn we shared our milk toothed lore
With a boastful Highland cianalas,
Sharing secrets of secluded reaches
Where peat-protected leavings
From dwellings long extinct
Thrilled with sacred inklings
From mossy rocks and relicts.

We left these touchstones far behind
When our family moved a second time
To a land across the seas:
New Scotland, where trees are leaved
In constant dusky green,
Mountains are young and sharply peaked
And rivers shift with shades of blue
Shimmering like shells of clabbydoos -
A country of uncanny beauty
Bold and unfamiliar.

Arriving late in autumn,
Solstice shadows darkened glens.
We held on through the winter
In all June’s ills and drear,
Without sainings, feast or cheer.

November puzzled with its tokens
Of spring life so abundant.
Quickthorn hedges halfway grown
Bloomed their corpse-y scent,
Calling us to Maying;
Yet we showed no thanks or merriment
With dancing or with praying.

As we aged and grew
The work of pioneering
Buried ancient thoughts;
No idle time to waste on guising
Or charms with kale stalks.
With Nature like a stranger
Zealots revelled in the ease
With which we dusted off
The songs and rites of centuries.

Once roads were carved and cities built
We might have made the effort
To give our spirits fresh abodes
In cave or tree or tor,
But any straggling paths were lost
With unexpected speed -
The malignant War made doubters of most
With blinding efficiency.

Shunned are sweet past glimmerings,
These truest links are torn
By seasons, work and war.
The main enduring contribution
From Old Scotland to New
Is the pipes’ divine emotion
That speaks of timeless yearning
To souls from any nation
For loves and lands they’re missing -
The sudden silence at the finish
Jars with premonition
Of earthly things all ending
With hushed anticipation.