blown in. a sibilant liminal. moving in the hush of black mornings. in the lift of heron wings over the marsh. fragments of other landscapes. voices of a distant time.
these days after samhain, i feel like the hull of a ship moving slowly into deeper water. without much effort the tiny universes in my ears open up, receptive to what can often go unheard. the voices of ancestral memory. the stories in my very cells.
the worlds dive into grief and war have me reflecting on my heritage. scottish and irish. that these lands in the not too distant past the population were colonised and vilified and some in turn did the same. but, what is with me at the moment is my ancestors who came from ireland during the potato famine. filled with stories of the old world. who passed them to my great grandmother Bridget, who was known to be a “fey woman” a wise woman and healer coming from the old traditions of ireland. perhaps she might have passed them on, had her husband not been killed during an air raid, swept up by a wave from the dockside into the north sea.
i have written a poem for her, and her grandmother taking that boat over the water and how now, their voices and stories have found me. receptive to their form.
the water gives and it takes away the grey squall of the inland ocean translucent hands clutch the steamship rail her grandmother as a girl, almost bone, hunger like the whirlpool aft the ships prow incomprehensible, mythic she wears a tin brooch of shamrock and eyebright and in her cloak a box of treasures; a pressed easter lily in a prayer book made of yew three small shavings of an irish elk antler, an exiled wren, a sketch of a puffin by her morai wrapped in a tear of lace from her mothers wedding veil that veil now her mother’s shroud and her heart, the hurl and rush of sea glasgow. the black dust on the tenement walls. she survives the twelve people in one room, the thin broth in enamel cups the rats, big as pine martens, the four weighted hand loom she misses the kelp, the warm weight of sleepy cows. she meets her acushla. bequeaths her legacies to her granddaughter; stories of the old place, the women low with wide hips on the wide green land on the eternal sea, of puffins, that their beaks glow in darkness how when you are lost they light your way home —--------------------------- granddaughter Bridget, she had so many names; fey woman, wise woman, morai in stout wide hands she clutched elk antlers and a tear of lace eyes bright with shamrock, with names held aloft, with folktales and memory she found her own acushla and their own grey sea to make a home where puffins roosted, forty thousand flames in which to belong she grew wide and smiled, a place between stillness and sound. oh but the sea took too, in it’s cold sharp palm your anam cara, your one true love when air raids blazed and the puffins were dark morai, when they found his body at daybreak did you throw your treasures then into the churning mass did you curse the puffins in your gush of longing or pray that they had guided him home? morai - gaelic term of endearment for grandmother acushla - gaelic for darling anam cara - gaelic for soul mate
i wish you all fair waters and the wet hush of mornings.
until next time
Jai Michelle
You always weave a spellbinding tale with your words, Jai Michelle <3
Hi Jai I love the idea of the puffins lighting the way home and the sleepy cows lovely to share these words c🌹