POEM TITLE
Blackness Castle, January 1963
For My Mother
That January the term began with snowploughs,
and the red car she drove us in to school
was dwarfed by head-high drifts on either side,
and on the way my hand was tight in hers.
The River Forth froze like Hokusai prints
and teachers said you could walk the waves
from Limekilns to Blackness Castle
across the solid Firth’s deep peaks and troughs.
At night, lost in the school’s icy turrets,
we’d scrape the glass to view the stars through frost.
Over the wide white lawn, smooth as bedsheets,
were fairy flares from Grangemouth’s oily lights.
On walks along the shore day after day
we’d blitz each other’s balaclava’d heads
with bombs of snow, and crunch the inch-thick ice
on puddles to Crombie Point and Ironmill Bay.
Water, sprayed onto the lawn, made a rink
for skates with our tiny figures bustling.
We’d pile on sledges at the hill, eyes closed,
before the long wail down, hands linked.
Looking back today at that world gone white,
what stands out is not knowing anything beyond.
What castle stood in ruins on a distant shore,
we didn’t care, so frozen were we in our delight.
The road back is carved again by snowploughs,
with deepening drifts on either side.
She’s at the wheel and leading me once more,
my hand tight in hers, eyes closed for the last steep slide.
Comments