For Christianne

Here is another poem for your delectation. This one was written about my mother by Susan Maciver. The son she mentions is my brother Coinneach. I rather like this poem, so thank you to Susan for allowing me to post it on here.

FOR CHRISTIANNE

I am cutting her peats
Standing for hours in the sleety rain
Plunging the blade in the black mud moor
Down, jerk, up, down, jerk, up,
As once she churned butter on a summer's day.
I see white in the hair of her son's bent head
As his still strong hands lift the cold peat slabs.
Each has a hollow where his thumb has held.
The sky is grey, the gulls fly low.
Her kitchen is smokey, steamy-warm.
She opens the small stove door and thrusts
Another fibrous parcel into the dull red ash.
I like to see her there, moving lightly
From kettle to broth-pot to hot fire flames
Rearranging her patterns of spouts and handles and sticking up spoons,
Not shivering through a cold wet morning
Bowed with peat buckets in the wind and rain
While her old man weeps that he is weak and she an aged queen.

By Susan Maciver.

The poem was published in 1985 in a book called: No Holds Barred, an anthology put together by The Raving Beauties. I feel sure that my mother would be very impressed to know that this wee poem is now being read by people around the world. I am. Thanks again to Susan xxx