a poem for winter

A Very Circular Song

At the brink of the cliff the boy on the quad-bike
goes round and around the same crag, by the geo,
the bull in the ring of his own making.
And the half-moon nissen huts are lit,
and their doors rolled back
on trowie-bright halls in the hill.
And the wind turns
like a great water-wheel.
The wind comes round to the north to pad
briefs on the line with pudenda of the wind,
and someone would need to take them in
before the next rain, or leave them to drench
and dry again.
And tufted ducks fly up from the lochan
to make a slow turn.
And gales are followed by rare, clear days
and steady cold nights, like tankers
to tow the next gale in.
More or less crucially, across the isles,
acts exceed themselves,like trout-mouthings;
a cement mixer bays at the daylight moon,
and Martha marches after her dad with a bucket,
and both are naked from the waist up,
and elsewhere a big timber frame goes up
as a little but-and-ben tumbles down
and the leg-hobbled, baby-faced Texal tup
scores a dial in the sodden yard –
his big moment having come and gone –
as the boy on the quadbike,
goes round and around the same crag,
tearing up the bog with his tyres,
the head-light and the tail-light at the brink
of the geo.

Jen Hadfield


poem from Jen's contribution to the '7 short sails' project

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