from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Wednesday 25 September 2013

coming to shiant island (a poem)

A poem of mine from All the Missing Names of Love for you today...


Coming to Shiant Island

The sea thins. The birlinn’s bows
part the fog like a finger through milk.
Below, the blue underworld of the Minch
still churns and roils, clutches at your keel.
The wind keens. What you were
peels away astern. No journey
worth making is easy. Here what you
learn will come from winter gnawing
the shingle, the play of cloud on sea,
the fires you succeed in igniting;
from the endurance of turf and granite,
the puffins’ lack of fear. You will make
your home in light and storm and rabbit-
scat, in the arms of the four winds.
The keel grinds on the shoreline.
You step out. The future begins.



© Roselle Angwin

2 comments:

  1. from Kathleen M Quinlan in Envoi
    'one-by-one, we followed/your word crumbs,/listening to your voice/until we heard our own.'
    It seems apt. Quinlan writing about following journey of Mary Oliver.

    love, Marg

    ReplyDelete
  2. Marg, that's lovely. Thank you for it. Must resubscribe to Envoi! With love, Rx

    ReplyDelete

Blog Archive