His frail hands
And words didn’t fly,
More afloat
With no sign of sinking.
They hung in the ale stained air,
Favoured Scots.
That harsh clicking drawl
Framed fractures
Of feelings and far flung travels.
I’m obliged to write in this
Mother tongue –
Adopted really
By boat men
And famine bent workers.
Verbs and nouns counted their way
Down family
Lines, abandoned towns.
The road from
Gweedore to Shettleston’s long
And the sentiment’s strong
In the snugs
And terraces my
Friends frequent.
Our sassenach names and
Emerald hearts stand apart
From the slave
Ships and bonds that built
Scotland.
Her foundations forced on the
Bones of an Empires song.
They made her,
My forefather’s fought
Her battles.
They built her brick by brick,
Connected track by Iron track.
They filled her
Tenements with life,
Her ship yards
With sarcasm and laughter.
In the midst of discontent
She bore me.
Not out of love, a
Mother that
Moulded and broke me.
She bound me up and thrust me
Out, immersed
In her waterways,
She drowned
Me with poets and thinkers.
So whose pen tells her freedom?
Whose lips
Dare not speak her tongue?
She cast me
Out the garden
To rot in her dole queues
And dank schemes.
A wandered teen,
I denied
Her and all her shortbread pomp.
So this is why I write.
Not for her
Islands, oil or troops,
Those bonny
Glens and lowland stoops,
But for McNultys and
Connellys
O’Carrolls
And Donechys
Who carved the rock on which she
Stood. So together we stand,
Wrapped in a
Cloak of Saltire blue.
For freedom
Has no native tongue,
She binds no ethnic
Glue. Our bonds
Are built in
Steel and stone.
The bedrock of proud Alba.
–Both background photos & forground photo (all three untitled) by Simone Berna
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