A Christmas Poem by Beth McDonough
Strathearn Snow
Perthshire spirals down, curls
inside this bleach bowl.
On that flat strath floor, Earn’s
eel sparkles black.
Cottages shoal to Dunning
as single ones are lost. Some fin
up Ruthven’s elver burn.
Hunch birds of prey wire
up, never where they seem.
© Beth McDonough
Ed: “Strathearn Snow” first appeared in Raum 1(3), Summer 2016.
I love these lapidiary stone and earthen poems flickering with their local light and naming;scuttering with life, they’re macrocosmic. It’s like a glacial movement of a whole locality, beyond historic resonances and back almost before language. Definitely needs a volume out.
Thank you Simon! I’m searching for something else, and I’ve just seen this! You’ve made me grin!