Fallen (2)
Sailors leave thinned sails
Too torn for winds
For her to sew for pillows
Using a needle
From stone-split willow
Fishermen
Bring her silver fish
She builds her stones for cleats
Gutting and drying
Hung on twine from plaited hay
All a circle
Like a fish trap
#PegsPoyums
Fallen
Dropped from the sky
I am shrunk
Ard marks
Are valleys
Cataracts fall up
The giantess digs her road
Shepherds leave offerings
One hundred sides of mutton
Salt-packed
In barrels made from oak of wrecks
Fleeces stacked
To wear or weave
Her spindle weight
Big as a quern stone
#PegsPoyums
Wife
He tells a story
Of enchanted wheeling birds
Of fairies
Ruins housing tiny people
In the woods
Silver eels like
Glittering arrows
Lancing through
The memories
Of my mother
#PegsPoyums
View to the road (2)
Your sister painted the fence
Her satin scarf
A Hermes copy in rayon
Covering her thinning hair
She led the cows
Into the byre
A switch of willow
Made into baskets
Carried on the backs of women
The men throw the peat
And we collect
Always the lifters
#PegsPoyums
View to the road
Your sister painted the fence
Her hat blowing
Covering her thinning hair
She took the cows
Into the byre
A switch of willow
Made into baskets
To lift the peats
On to the backs
Of Women
A bowing towards men
But we are the lifters
#PegsPoyums
Byre
Nails, thousands
Spanners, eight
Fishing floats, seven
Fishing nets, four
Wooden tillers, three
Feed scoops, two
Bread trays, two
Land rover wheel guards, two
Sweet jars, two
Cat carriers, two
Vice, one
Crowbar, one
Oil can, one
Lifetime, one
#PegsPoyums
Jewels
If I leave last
Unknown hands will open drawers Empty pockets, tins and jars
Of tiny sand-packed shells
Wee pebbles worn smooth in the swell
And glass of soft-ground Gulf Stream green
And I will be on the West Beach with the oystercatchers
Singing on the edge of the Atlantic
#PegsPoyums
The thatchers
All those boys
Taken to war
Instead of ladders
Lashed to a view of golden sand
Climbed down to a sunset fire
Was mud, shuttered and dark
If they returned
The roofs were turned to tin
Edges sharp as the hem of a frozen kilt
Now turned to rust as dry as blood
#PegsPoyums
No stairs
Did you mean these toilets?
A question
To my invisible disability
Usually, only inside me says
You utter wanker
But, outside rages
'Fine, take my wig
My nails'
Oh sorry you can't,
I don't have nails to give
Or any fucks, by the way
For want of a nail
The high-horse is lost
#PegsPoyums
Contour lines
(silk map WW2 underwear)
Against a thigh, a partial continent
Between the curve of breasts, a bay
Along a spine, an isthmus
The ribcage
An archipeligo
Tiny islands
Scattered
From the air
By a pilot
Or a deviant god
His silk map floating
#WoŕldPoetryDay
#PegsPoyums
Cailleach
A hand curved
Over my cot
Whispering
Sweet words on my cheek
She drew my breath
In a silver thread
Pulled from my mouth
Woven between her fingers
To take my voice
I bit the silver
She fell to the floor
An explosion of sand and feathers
She did not know
I had the bard's tooth
#PegsPoyums
A blue sky on the horizon of scattered buildings, built by a community. A poem about cancer. How to Behave with the Ill by Julia Darling Approach us assertively, try not to cringe or sidle, it makes us fearful. Rather walk straight up and smile Do not touch us unless invited, particularly don’t squeeze upper arms, or try to hold our hands. Keep your head erect. Don’t bend down, or lower your voice. Speak evenly. Don’t say ‘How are you?' in an underlined voice Don’t say, 1 heard that you were very ill. This makes the poorly paranoid. Be direct, say ‘How’s your cancer?’ Try not to say how well we look, compared to when we met in Safeway’s. Please don’t cry, or get emotional, and say how dreadful it all is. Also (and this is hard I know) try not to ignore the ill, or to scurry past, muttering about a bus, the bank. Remember that this day might be your last and that it is a miracle that any of us stands up, breathes, behaves at all. Copyright ©: Julia Darling
Please, please
Do not say we battle
Or lose the fight
We are not fighting
We are being fought for
Blue cotton scrubs
Help us up
And down
Into the shower
That takes 25 minutes
Then, in two weeks, takes 5
One foot in front of the other
Until we can't
#NHS #PegsPoyums
Please see alt
Mum
The seamstress pins her
Too slim for the smallest dress Pushed through a curtain
Paraded past rich ladies
Who think they are better
But they never rode bareback Hands tangled in a black shining mane
Cotton dress hitched up
Thundering over the moor
#PegsPoyums
Number 27
A woman
Thin, with pearly hair
stands and shouts;
'I once knew a boy,
he was ripe for the picking'
Her r rolls at ripe
Her hand mimes
picking a fruit
We all turn away
*
She sits, 'No! You can't have a mop or a bucket'.
Still, we turned
From the girl nobody ever turned towards
#PegsPoyums
17
I learned the truth at seventeen
My cousins all were beauty queens
But those of us with plainer faces
Unschooled in the Cristian graces
At seventeen
*
I stepped away
Did not look back
The church was not for me
To rid
It's hate
And ideology
I learned the truth at seventeen
#PegsPoyums
Here is the librarian
To sort your books
Thrillers
Scottish Interest
Religion
General novels
And many copies
Of the collected works
Of Robert Burns
Well thumbed
Paper edges soft as memories
I sit in your kitchen
Remembering your sister
Painting the fence
#PegsPoyums
Glass
Slim fingers
Set the fine wool threads
Into the wooden heart of the loom
For a man
**
She cleans houses
And is a midwife
She washes
And scrubs
**
But these travels
Take her over the machair
To pick the brightest flowers
And place them in a coffee jar
#PegsPoyums
Salt water
Those people
In the big house
They don't know how to cook
I lower the salmon
Into the water
Just a simmer
Turn it off
Leave it fifteen minutes
*
A copper fish-kettle
Polished with a rag
A servant girl
Turned chef
#PegsPoyums
Frequency
I touch the stones
To hear
Silent whispers
Of the seal-wife
A knife
Stripping her skin
To a hard stone-place
With black smoke, choking
Or a golden horse
Swimming
To guide a boat
Or the ghost boys
Pushing the brothers
Away from a stampede
Yes, there are always two
#PegsPoyums
Got in art convo tonight. Revised response to the wonderful@chloecumming.bsky.social
Depth of field
If you see a whirling constellation
A galaxy shining
And see movement
Red-burning
In the heart of a star
All in the surface of a teapot
Know it is all forged in the crucible
Of deep space
#PegsPoyums
A glittering Gneiss
On a clear day
A sharp breeze
Is good for working
My blade cuts the perimeter
An occasional screech
Like hitting a filling
With a fork
I lay bare a a ridged rock
Leaning on my spade
To check my work
We will lie there
Light as birds
Drunk and heavy as seals
#PegsPoyums
We, who look to the ground
Bent to see a glint of gneiss
The shadow of an earth house
Scraped out by the toe of my boot
*
Bent, looking for clay shards
Coiled then shaped by hands
Decorated with fingernails and shells
Pressed into memory
*
Bent, pulling seaweed aside
Cowries, cooried
#PegsPoyums
Woolgathering (2)
Scrape the rake
Through grass
Scratch up the thatch
And pile it
Walk the fence
Checking for gaps
Tease off the snagged wool
Pick out the heather twigs
Take it in for the carding
*
The hairbrush gathers
Brown and thinning
Until a shearing
Is the only option
#PegsPoyums
Woolgathering
Take the rake
Through the grass
Scrape up the thatch
And pile it up
*
Walk the fence
Checking for gaps
Pull off the caught-wire wool
Always white
Never brown
*
The hairbrush gathers
Brown
Until a decision to shear
We assume it will be white
An old sheep
Not a lamb
#PegsPoyums
Ban-Dia nan coilltean
The caillach cut off my hand
Jealous that it touched her son
In ways she could not
I wait, hiding in the woodlands
Tall, surveying my lands
Her spell will fail in time
And we will be united
(Title: Goddess of the woods)
#PegsPoyums
Grandmother
Slim fingers
Set the fine wool threads
Into the wooden heart of the loom
For a man
*
She cleans houses
And is a midwife
She washes
And scrubs
*
But these travels
Take her over the machair
To pick the brightest flowers
And show them in a coffee jar
All the colours of jewels
#PegsPoyums
Here is the librarian
To sort your books
Thrillers
Scottish Interest
Religion
General novels
And many copies
Of the collected works
Of Robert Burns
Well thumbed
Paper edges soft for memories
I sit in your kitchen
Remembering your sister
Painting the fence
#PegsPoyums
Been a sad couple of weeks...
Thanks
For coming over
I have this house of stuff
I don't know what is
Important
And what is not
*
Can I hold it all
Against my cheek
Softness
So brittle
Thin shells
Cradled in my hands
One tiny slip
Will shatter them
#PegsPoyums
Forehead
I sit with you
Linen pressed
For another day
To ask the questions
As you turn the hay
Or pull the seaweed
For a beautiful bright potato
In your muddled mind
Skin dark and smooth as kelp
We were made in rock
Gneiss to our bones
#pegsPoyums
Procession
Kate sees the coffin-ghosts in the windowpane
And stops mid-pour
from setting out tea and pancakes for the visitors
who cannot see the seven
One leads, six carry
Clothed in black
Reflected in glass
from just behind her shoulder
#PegsPoyums
