Leafs an Beuchs

8/9/2019 Leafs an Beuchs

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2/11

is it any wonder

i come from a tribe of nature worshippers

pantheistsbelievers in fairies

forest sprites and wood nymphs

who heard devils in their watermills

met them in the woods

cloven-hoofed and dapper

gentlemen of the night

who named the thunder

who praised and glorified bread

white wheat waving waist-high from the earth

and held it sacred

wasting not a crumb

who spent afternoons scavenging

in forests of pine, fir and birch

who transferred jesus from his wooden cross

transformed him into a stone-carved peasant

raised him on a stone pedestal where

he sat with infinite patience in rain and snow

stone legs apart

stone elbows on stone knees

stone chin in stone handworrying and sorrowing for the world

who named their sons and daughters after

amber, hazel, rowan, dawn

is it any wonder then

that i speak to oak, buttercup and juniper


3/11

or that i bend down to the earth

gather pebbles, acorns, leaves, bones

and bring them home

to enshrine on mantelpiece and sillroof-beam and hearth

is it any wonder that i grow nervous indoors

and must step outside from time to time

to touch a tree or sink my fingers into the earth

or just watch a bird fly past


4/11

athelstaneford

my grandfather in his last days would

tell me to search the sky for omens inthe waning hours of night

for clouds the shape of crosses

portending war and dispersion

for stars swept like white dust behind

the darkest corner of the moon

auguring illness and death

for streaks of light

oranges and bloody redsthat divine the smoldering contours of famine

in the hours before dawn

whenever the wind now trembles the house

and the clouds are at odd angles

white against a pale blue sky

I stumble suddenly from sleep and reach

to open the window

watching the horizon for signaled changes

absenting myself to the dark of the room

to wait for the whistling of the wind to stop

the dry whisker of my grandfather's voice

unshaven in my ear


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6/11

Cape Wrath

The kintrae ends here. Shairp gray rock,

haurd as consonants, usurps the saft yirth.Whaur waves curl roond their vowels, Kervaig

stairts its lands end lapidary o shingle.

In the dstance is the horizons lang divsion:

the sea ablo; the lift abuin; the shore atween.

Nae wonder we think in threes: land, watter, lift.

Nae binary opposites, nae polemics, juistthe even-haundit trnity that accommodates

third pairties, third dimensions, third warls.

Cloods blear the blae; the oncomin storms

rummle is gray flux, tumult. Gulls hing in place.

O a suddent a lichtnin bowt cracks the lift gin

it war a windae an the maument war a rock,

gin a suddent thocht smultaneously yirks thegither

fire, air, yirth an watter. Am in ma element.


7/11

Hogmanay

We burn wuid in the street.

Its auld years nicht.Its flames licht up the

lamps that line the gait.

We, the leivin,

turn oorsels inti shaddaes

ti cam naurer ti the deid,

here in this toun,

whaur the deid aince bid.

Their los brings hame ti us

the exstence o anither warld;

a warld as daurk as the nicht,

as waarm an sleekit as the flames.


8/11

kilbucho kirkyaird

o their hoose nocht remains

buit the grummel o a brucken waa

o the mony wha war sib ti me

nocht remains

no even that

buit in ma mynd no ane cross is tint

this roupit toun is ma hert


9/11


10/11

Leafs an Beuchs

A dyke. Drystane. Eevy. Marlt bark whimplin.

Sun ayont. Leamin throu leafs.

A wee kirkyaird caad Kilbucho. Nane cams here buit the licht.

Leafs uphaudit ti the lift.

Wuind owre leafs is a cantation that the stirlins understaun.

An aiblins the deid, rowed i the daurk yirth.

I see the craigs o the lift throu a nairrae slap atween the beuchs.Sloosht open bi the win, leafs an beuchs lat sun eneuch ti blin me.

Shaddaes in a neuk o the dyke ablo black bunnet.

Eiklin in breer. Lurking ahint bindwuid.

The daurk sickle o a swift's body pirls ayont the beuchs.

Beuchs brak the licht. Leafs caup an tremmle wi it.

The leesome neuk is tacht agin it. Shaddaes haud their braith.

Ayont Kilbucho the lift louts ti set her gowden crummock doun

oan stoups o clood. The yett scairts shut.

The cleek faas inti its roustit raut.


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Andrew McCallum lives in Biggar with his wife

and three children. He is a big fan of German

Expressionist poetry from the early 20th centuryand Scandinavian crime fiction. This is reflected

in the dark tone of his writing. He has had work

published in various magazines and anthologies,

including Chapman, The Eildon Tree, Lallans,

Ereignis, Sein und Werden, Northwords Now, The

Wallace Muse, Both Sides of Hadrian's Wall and

PEN African Writers Abroad's Dance the Guns toSilence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro Wiwa. Always

the bridesmaid and never the bride, he has twice

been runner-up in the McCash Scots Poetry Prize

and a runner-up in the John Muir Trust/Fort

William Mountain Festival writing competition.

Copyright Andrew McCallum

www.andrewmccallum.weebly.com

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Leafs an Beuchs