Here are the concluding verses from Sheena Blackall’s vivid evocation of her childhood years in the north-east of Scotland (Malfranteaux Concepts, 2017, £3). In the course of the poem, memory eases into reflections, clear-eyed rather than morbid, on mortality.

CHILDHOOD IN THE CUP OF A GLEN

I would sit cross legged with a toad in the glen

Staring into its jewelled eyes like a zealot adoring an idol

~

When I swam in the loch I was a salmon’s child

Silver scaled in the sun. I knew I would always return

In thought or flesh to the water

~

Deeside wombed me

My vertebrae are the pebbles of Glen Cairn, Glen Muick

The little tinkling stream of Allt-an-Sneachda

~

I came to womanhood here

A rough wooing, bloody and harsh

Smelling of fish and tin

~

The braille of heather etched poems on my hands

My mind was a quaich, its tangs fermented there

~

This place will be my shroud

My dead lie under this soil

The moon kisses their stones

~

Their souls, like pigeons, curmur

On the kirk slates, looking down

On their bolt-hole, their bone-lair

Their precious scoop of ash

~

Now I am toughened and leathered like a cured hide

I draw near to the lip of the grave

Deeside is the mouth that will swallow me

My kist will rest easy, there

curmur=a low murmuring or rumbling sound