Book Week Scotland 2016
Friday's Book Week Scotland offering comes at night, which is fitting as it's a poem - by a different poet again! - called Night Terrors.
NIGHT TERRORS
by
Susan Crow
Reeds, rude wind warped,
Whistle as spirits,
Filling the marsh with echo
And calling in past favours
From friars' lanterns
Above peated bog.
Rain drenched willows,
Seaweed-like, scourging
Sacrificial grey ash trees,
Dropping narrow, pointed leaves,
Wherever they touch,
Blanketing ditches.
The morass moves,
Trembling with marsh gas,
Nothing is static nor still.
Rushes quiver, shaken straws,
Leafy clumps shiver
To footfall of fay.
Illusion rules,
Mossy witchcraft makes
This waste a place of magic.
Sorcery in the sedges
Daubs with certainty
An order to come.
The path shapes soon,
Welcome as a friend,
Straight as a ribbon of steel.
Even so, a dark night's length,
Leading yet homeward
Towards the red dawn.
Peace paints the day,
While black shadows spit
At pewter dim trunks of trees,
In heavenly brilliance
Washing clean the sins
Of each yesterday.
Baptism, now
With clear blameless glow,
For the new world of morning.
Shadows lessen, white gulls drift,
Hovering, settling
With grey-caped jackdaws.
Apiece they wait.
There will be mercy,
Always kindness comes with day.
The dark journey has carried,
Through fear and trembling,
Soft night spilling ray.