Eggplant.place

1y

A bird’s voice chinks and tinkles
Alone in the gaunt reedbed –
Tiny silversmith
Working late in the evening…

—Norman MacCaig, “July evening”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem #NormanMacCaig

July evening
Norman MacCaig

A bird’s voice chinks and tinkles
Alone in the gaunt reedbed –
Tiny silversmith
Working late in the evening.

I sit and listen. The rooftop
With a quill of smoke stuck in it
Wavers against the sky
In the dreamy heat of summer.

Flowers’ closing time: bee lurches
Across the hayfield, singing
And feeling its drunken way
Round the air’s invisible corners.

And grass is grace. And charlock
Is gold of its own bounty.
The broken chair by the wall
Is one with immortal landscapes.

Something has been completed
That everything is part of,
Something that will go on
Being completed forever.

ALT

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1y

July. Summer on the island
muffles in scarves.
Merino-socked, Berghaus-booted,
swap cocoon of car
for hilly slither. Pilgrim-trail
with sodden strangers,
step in time to the cadence of rain…

—Nikki Robson, “The Callanish Stones”
published in Other Worlds: An Anthology of Scottish Island Poems (Birlinn, 2022)

https://birlinn.co.uk/2022/06/20/poem-of-the-week-the-callanish-stones-by-nikki-robson/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Hebrides #Lewis #Callanish #StandingStones #tourism

The Callanish Stones
Nikki Robson

July. Summer on the island
muffles in scarves.
Merino-socked, Berghaus-booted,
swap cocoon of car
for hilly slither. Pilgrim-trail
with sodden strangers,
step in time to the cadence of rain.
White-trainered Americans patter: there isn’t a bus,
Earl, I can’t believe there isn’t a bus.
Even taped seams leak. Cold as
Lewisian gneiss, circle
the circle of Neolithic ritual.
Reach out, for Callanish grants
what Stonehenge forbids:
it feels like wet stone.
On the downhill squelch,
the final syllable’s a sneeze.
I buy a fridge magnet.

ALT

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1y

Collecting The Most Beautiful Books
22 Aug, Mount Stuart House, Rothesay – £8.50–£11

Kelsey Jackson Williams will explore armorial bookbindings in the Bute Collection & tell how aristocratic pride, the bookbinders' art, & subsequent tastes in collecting came together to form an exceptional but unknown assemblage of book-art in the Mount Stuart libraries.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/collecting-the-most-beautiful-books-august-talk-tickets-1529153030879

#Scottish #literature #books #bookbinding #bookhistory #Bute #Rothesay

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262d

Sorrow remembers us when day is done.
It sits in its old chair gently rocking
and singing tenderly in the evening…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “When Day is Done”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800170940

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #IainCrichtonSmith #sorrow #grief #grieving

When Day is Done
by Iain Crichton Smith

Sorrow remembers us when day is done.
It sits in its old chair gently rocking
and singing tenderly in the evening.
It welcomes us home again after the day.
It is so old in its black silken dress,
its stick beside it carved with legends.
It tells its stories over and over again.
After a while we have to stop listening.

ALT

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1y

The hill is tossing high, frail wisps of
rosy cloud to glide in steady gale
along a turquoise sky, around, above the
perpendicular and slightly askew columns,
above the triangular gap
between crown and crag…

—Tessa Ransford, “August 3rd”
published in Shadows from the Greater Hill (Ramsay Head Press, 1987)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/august-3rd/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturepoem #naturewriting

August 3rd
Tessa Ransford

The hill is tossing high, frail wisps of
rosy cloud to glide in steady gale
along a turquoise sky, around, above the
perpendicular and slightly askew columns,
above the triangular gap
between crown and crag.

The moon, full at midnight,
is now high and faded
almost a lazy eyelid:
day’s eye opening
or night’s eye closing.

Birds chase and ride the wind
reeling, wheeling,
aware that in a moment
ordinary flight of day will have to be resumed.

The hawk alone is steady,
keeps position despite the gale
to pinpoint a victim

and far below
grasses tinge in flower:
harebell, yarrow, lady’s yellow bedstraw
Among the rangy thistles and fatted doves.

ALT

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1y

Whaur’s yer Willie Shakespeare noo?
11 Sept, Royal Society of Edinburgh – free, ticketed

How does Scots language come alive on stage – and what does it say about us?

Playwright Ian Brown & linguist Jeremy Smith explore the Scots & English language varieties woven into THE SCOTCH PLAY (1990) – Brown’s reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/whaurs-yer-willie-shakespeare-noo-tickets-1489136991829

#Scottish #literature #drama #theatre #Scots #Scotslanguage #Shakespeare #Macbeth

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265d

When Christian I of Norway failed to pay a dowry for his daughter Margaret, queen to James III, #Orkney & #Shetland were annexed by the Scottish crown #OTD, 20 Feb, 1472

NORTHERN-NESS looks at literature from the northern isles, from the sagas to the far future

1/8

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2019/07/northern-ness/

#Scottish #literature #Orkney #Shetland #Orcadian #Shetlandic #Norse

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264d

Subverting the Script: Alan Bissett on Class, Masculinity, & the Telling of Tales

Playwright, novelist & performer Alan Bissett speaks to Scott Cassidy on The Creative Resistance podcast about class, masculinity, & the telling of tales.

https://thecreativeresistancepodcast.substack.com/p/subverting-the-script-alan-bissett

#Scottish #literature #class #masculinity #AlanBissett #podcast

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260d

“People need to hear a story like this now,” says Pinar Aksu … “We don’t always have a victory at the end of our stories, but hope is all we’ve got.”

The award-winning EVERYBODY TO KENMURE STREET premieres at the Glasgow film festival, 25 February

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/24/power-pyjamas-everybody-to-kenmure-street-glasgow-immigration

#Scottish #film #cinema #KenmureStreet #Scotland #Glasgow

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1y

Cuil-lodair, is Briseadh na h-Eaglaise,
is briseadh nan tacannan –
lamhachas-làidir dà thrian de ar comas;
’se seòltachd tha dhìth oirinn…

—“Cruaidh?” (“Steel?”), by Ruaraidh MacThòmais (Derick Thomson, 1921–2012) – born #OTD, 5 Aug. A 🎂 🧵

1/6

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/cruaidh/

#Scottish #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Cruaidh?
le Ruaraidh MacThòmais

Cuil-lodair, is Briseadh na h-Eaglaise,
is briseadh nan tacannan –
lamhachas-làidir dà thrian de ar comas;
‘se seòltachd tha dhìth oirinn.
Nuair a theirgeas a’ chruaidh air faobhar na speala
caith bhuat a’ chlach-liomhaidh;
chan eil agad ach iarann bog
mur eil de chruas nad innleachd na ni sgathadh.

Is caith bhuat briathran mìne
oir chan fhada bhios briathran agad;
tha Tuatha Dè Danann fon talamh,
tha Tìr nan Og anns an Fhraing,
‘s nuair a ruigeas tu Tìr a’ Gheallaidh,
mura bi thu air t’ aire,
coinnichidh Sasannach riut is plion air,
a dh’ innse dhut gun tug Dia, bràthair athar, còir dha anns an fhearann.

ALT

Steel?
Translator: Derick Thomson

Culloden, the Disruption,
and the breaking up of the tack-farms –
two-thirds of our power is violence;
it is cunning we need.
When the tempered steel near the edge of the scythe-blade is worn
throw away the whetstone;
you have nothing left but soft iron
unless your intellect has a steel edge that will cut clean.

And throw away soft words,
for soon you will have no words left;
the Tuatha Dè Danann are underground,
the Land of the Ever-young is in France,
and when you reach the Promised Land,
unless you are on your toes,
a bland Englishman will meet you,
and say to you that God, his uncle, has given him a title to the land.

ALT

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1y

CFP: 39th Annual Conference of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society
9–11 April 2026, Philadelphia, USA

Papers are invited on any aspect of 18th-century Scottish history, thought, & culture, especially the notable 250th anniversaries in 2026, e.g. the role of Scots in the American Revolution, the publication of the Wealth of Nations, & the death of David Hume

Deadline: 10 Sept. Details in ALT-text

@litstudies

#Scottish #literature #history #culture #18thcentury #CulturalStudies

ECSSS will sponsor its own panels at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies meeting. Papers are invited on any aspect of eighteenth-century Scottish history, thought, and culture, but we would particularly encourage proposals for papers and panels relating to the 250th anniversaries of relevant events that occurred in 1776, such as the role of Scots in the American Revolution (especially in regard to Philadelphia), the publication of the Wealth of Nations, and the death of David Hume.

Details of the ECSSS-sponsored plenary speaker and the evening reception will follow in due course, along with information on any other aspects of the programme in which ECSSS are involved.

Because the programme for the ASECS meeting goes to press at the beginning of October, we have to put together the ECSSS programme by the end of the summer. Please act quickly in order to help us organize the programme in time.

Please email a title and brief abstract of your proposed 20-minute paper, along with a one-page CV, to Rachel Bani (rachel.bani@converse.edu) by 10 September 2025. Those submitting proposals for 3- or 4-paper panels should send the panel title and abstract as well as titles and abstracts of the individual papers and CVs of the presenters by the same deadline. Please ensure that any proposal include ‘2026 conference proposal’ in the email subject line.

ALT

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261d

It’s not the crack you expect.
It’s more a soft whump,
then an elegant leaving, like
a grand piano dropped
from a silent-movie window…

—Karen Ashe, “The Sound of an Iceberg Calving”
in SOUND OF AN ICEBERG: New Writing Scotland 37 (ASL, 2019)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws37/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #globalwarming #environment

Karen Ashe
The Sound of an Iceberg Calving

It’s not the crack you expect.
It’s more a soft whump,
then an elegant leaving, like
a grand piano dropped
from a silent-movie window,
a slow-motion school bus
over a soap-opera cliff,
Falling Man falling
forever on prime-time news
then the kettle clicks to a rapid boil
as a small finger presses a button,
the screen flickers and blurs,
and the iceberg is replaced
by slimming ads and payday loans,
super-fast fibre-optic wifi,
high-speed trains, and the tea
bleeds into the water and milk
delivered unseen in early hours
from cows in distant misty pastures
stays fresh for nine days
in fat plastic bottles
that go in the recycling
and the baby shudders inside
half a month from completion
and the buy-now-pay-later sofa
is wobbly in the leg already
and the interest-free 42-inch telly is frozen
on an ad for wonga.com
and the dunked biscuit dissolves
in the tea in the time it takes
to change channels
and in some faraway dark cold country
of slavering bears and wandering herdsmen
the iceberg
is still
calving.

ALT

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1y

In the Enola Gay
five minutes before impact
he whistles a dry tune

Later he will say
that the whole blooming sky
went up like an apricot ice…

—Alison Fell, “August 6, 1945”
published in The New British Poetry, 1968–88 (Paladin, 1988)

Hiroshima was hit by an atomic bomb on this day, 6 August, 1945

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Hiroshima #HiroshimaDay #atomicbomb #EnolaGay

August 6, 1945
Alison Fell

In the Enola Gay
five minutes before impact
he whistles a dry tune

Later he will say
that the whole blooming sky
went up like an apricot ice.
Later he will laugh and tremble
at such a surrender, for the eye
of his belly saw Marilyn’s skirts
fly over her head for ever

On the river bank,
bees drizzle over
hot white rhododendrons

Later she will walk
the dust, a scarlet girl
with her whole stripped skin
at her heel, stuck like an old
shoe sole or mermaid’s tail

Later she will lie down
in the flecked black ash
where the people are become
as lizards or salamanders
and, blinded, she will complain
Mother you are late. So late

Later in dreams he will look
down shrieking and see

ladybirds
ladybirds

ALT

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1y

BBC World Book Club: Arthur Conan Doyle
20 August, Toppings Booksellers, Edinburgh: free, ticketed

Harriett Gilbert is joined by international bestselling crime writer Val McDermid & leading Holmes expert Dr Mark Jones – Commissioning Editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal and Co-Host of The Doings of Doyle podcast – to discuss Conan Doyle’s masterpiece and its powerful influence on crime and detective fiction.

https://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/edinburgh/world-book-club-arthur-conan-doyle/

#Scottish #literature #SherlockHolmes #ArthurConanDoyle

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23d

“Places don’t merely preserve our past. They preserve versions of our attention. We return believing we’re revisiting a landscape, only to discover that the landscape has been quietly keeping one of our former selves in trust.”

—Kevin MacNeil on voyages, returns, & memory

https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/10/19/a-journey-is-also-another-journey/

#Scottish #literature #Skye #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Hebrides

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241d

One of the many great musical set pieces in the Oscar-winning movie SINNERS is “Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go” (aka “Wild Mountain Thyme”) – adapted in the 1940s by Francis McPeake from “The Braes o Balquhidder”, an original song by Robert Tannahill (1774–1810), Paisley’s “weaver poet”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xh5bhmU8X8

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #music #folksong #Sinners #Oscars

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1y

#OTD, 7 Aug, 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson boarded the SS Devonia to make the ten-day passage from Greenock to New York to pursue his thwarted relationship with Fanny Osbourne. In THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT he gives a vivid, sharp, & engaging account of his (impoverished) travels to & in America – read the first 5 chapters free 👇

1/2

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/free-publications/the_amateur_emigrant/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #travelwriting #RobertLouisStevenson #emigration

Alt text

Book cover

Robert Louis Stevenson
The Amateur Emigrant
From the Clyde to Sandy Hook
Chapters I to V

On a blue-grey background, fading from dark to light from bottom to top, horizontal lines of blue-green spirals representing waves cover the bottom half of the page. The top line of spirals are coloured white.

ALT

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1y

All Back to Mine with Val McDermid
A Kick Up The Arts podcast

Recorded live in the Portobello Bookshop, Nicola Meighan talks to folk singer, football fan, & Fun Loving Crime Writer Val McDermid about life, love, reading, & writing

https://www.akickupthearts.org/blog-3-1/all-back-to-mine-with-val-mcdermid

#Scottish #literature #podcast #ValMcDermid #crimefiction

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1y

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees and the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading and blurred with rain…

—John Burnside, “Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012”
published in BLACK MIDDENS: New Writing Scotland 31 (ASL, 2013)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JohnBurnside

John Burnside
Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012

“Necessity is not the mother of invention; play is”
—Ian D. Suttie

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees & the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading & blurred with rain,
the wire fence studded with fleece
& indelible traces
of polythene wrapping; marrowfat clogging the drains
on the road that runs out to the coast
then disappears.
A last bleed of gold in the west, like a Shan Shui painting,
then darkness.

The animals are gone
that hunted here:
wolves coming down from the hills, that
immaculate hunger,
rumours of bear & cat, quick
martens & raptors.
The rain is darker now,
though not so black,
oil-iridescent, streaked with the smell of lard
– it gets late early out here; though late, out here,
has a different meaning:

stars in the road
& the absence of something more
than birchwoods or song,
pallet fires, tyre-tracks,
grubbed fields clouded with grease
& palm oil, hints
of molasses and lanolin, tarpaper,
iron filings.
A narrow band of weather on the road,
then houses; though we scarcely think of them
as that.

ALT

I remember a meadow at dusk
in another rain
(and this is nostalgia now); I remember
I stood in a wind like gossamer and watched
three roe fawns and a doe
come quietly, one by one, through the silvering grasses,
wary, but curious, giving me just enough space
to feel safe,
their watchfulness reminding me of something
lost, a creaturely
awareness I could only glimpse

in passing.
That meadow is gone, and dusk
isn’t dusk any more
– or not out here –
just miles of tract and lay-by on the way
to junkyards and dead allotments,
guard dogs on tether,
biomass, factory outlets,
the half-light of ersatz dairies petering out
on rotting fields
of rape and mustardseed.

We’ve been going at this for years:
a steady delete
of anything that tells us what we are,
a long
distaste for the blood warmth and bloom
of the creaturely: local
fauna and words for colour, all the shapes
of ritual and lust
surrendered where they fell, beneath a fog
of smut and grime and counting-house
as church, the old gods

ALT

buried undead beneath the rural sprawl
that bears their names, or wandering the hills
of Lammermuir and Whitelee, waiting out
the rule of Mammon, till the land returns
– with or without us –
chainlink going down
to bindweed, drunken
thistles in a sway
of wind and goldfinch on the dead estates, fat
clusters of moss
and gentian, broken

tarmac with new shoots
of coltsfoot breaking through
like velvet, till the darkness of the leaf
unfurls into a light we could have known
but failed to see
by choosing not to find
the kingdom-at-hand:
this order;
this dialectic;
this mother of invention,
ceaseless play.

ALT

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241d

Alasdair Maclean (1926–1994) was born 100 years ago #OTD, 16 March. Maclean left school at 14 to work in the shipyards, before travelling the world in the Merchant Marine & as a National Service infantryman. His 2 poetry collections, published in the 1970s, were critically acclaimed, and his one full-length prose work, the poetic memoir/journal NIGHT FALLS ON ARDNAMURCHAN, is a modern classic.

1/4

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/alasdair-maclean/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Argyll

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1y

“[I]f you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat.”

—Nancy Hawkins, the majestic narrator of Muriel Spark’s A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON, on why a writer should own a cat

Today, 8 August, is International Cat Day (don’t tell them) 🐈‍⬛

1/3

#Scottish #literature #writing #cats #InternationalCatDay #MurielSpark

So I passed him some very good advice, that if you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work, I explained, the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp. The light from a lamp, I explained, gives a cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquillity of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.

ALT

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1y

Call for papers:
Irish & Scottish Women Writers for Children, c. 1750–1940
12 Dec, University of Edinburgh – free

Although significantly overlooked, Irish & Scottish women wrote children’s literature across various genres & forms. Papers on the symposium themes are invited by 31 August.

@litstudies

#Scottish #Irish #literature #womenwriters #ChildrensLiterature #18thcentury #19thcentury #20thcentury #CallforPapers

Paper presentations of 20 minutes in length are welcomed and may be on the following writers:

Catherine Sinclair, Elizabeth Hamilton, Isabella Fyvie Mayo, Ethel Forster Heddle, Annie S. Swan, Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Robina Hardy, Jessie Saxby, the Findlater sisters, the Mulholland sisters, Lady Gregory, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Leadbeater, Violet Finney, Katharine Tynan, Sophia Rosamond Praeger.

Or, the focus of the paper might be tied to one of the following themes:

Irish/Scottish women writers or editors of children’s periodicals.
Irish/Scottish women writers or illustrators of fairy tales or folktales.
Writing partnerships and the social networks of women writers.
The local, national and international in Irish/Scottish children’s literature.
Children’s literature written in Scots, Irish, or Scottish Gaelic.
Religion and politics in Irish/Scottish children’s literature.
Collections research and archival recovery of children’s literature.

Selected papers from this symposium will be invited to be expanded and collected in an edited volume of essays.

Please email a 200-word abstract and a 50-word bio to Lois Burke at v1lburk3@ed.ac.uk by 31st August.

The symposium will be free to attend, and catering will be provided.

ALT

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1y

Anima Celtica: Ella Carmichael as scholar, activist & muse in the Scottish Celtic Revival

Ella Carmichael (1870–1928) was born #OTD, 9 Aug. Abigail Burnyeat talks about Ella Carmichael & her role in the Scottish Celtic revival. The first female student of Celtic at Edinburgh University, Ella Carmichael was also founder of the Celtic Union & the journal The Celtic Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVzPDYfsoQ

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #folklore #CelticStudies #CelticRevival

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264d

Nam sheasamh thall aig geat a’ phreiridh,
feur glan fom bhotannan,
lamhan fuar nam phocaidean,
faileadh an dup
gu fann
gu neo-chinnteach
a’ nochdadh mu mo chuinnlean…

—Anne Frater, “Aig an Fhaing”

Today, 21 February, is UNESCO International Mother Language Day

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/mother-language

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #language #minoritylanguage #MotherLanguageDay #UNESCO

Aig an Fhaing
Anne Frater

Nam sheasamh thall aig geat a’ phreiridh,
feur glan fom bhotannan,
lamhan fuar nam phocaidean,
faileadh an dup
gu fann
gu neo-chinnteach
a’ nochdadh mu mo chuinnlean
’s mi a’ coimhead cach cruinn
lachanaich le cheile
timcheall air an fhaing:
a’ bruthadh nan caorach,
guthan ard ag eigheachd
’s a’ gearain, ’s a’ gaireachdainn
’s gach druim thugams’
gam ghlasadh a-mach.
Mi seasamh, ’s a’ coimhead
’s a’ feitheamh airson facal
mo ghluasad gu feum.
Mi siubhal gu slaodach
a’ cruinneachadh nan uan
’s gan ruagadh romham
a-steach gu cach;
uain a’ ruith
gu meulaich math’r.
Boinneagan uisge
mar mhillean mialan
a’ leum as an dup,
agus crathadh cinn nan adharcan
fliuch, fuar, feagalach
a’ deanamh as.
Ceum no dha eile
’s chi mi aodannan nan gair’.
Mo lamhan fhin a’ breith air cloimh,
faileadh an dup air mo chorragan,
peant a’ camharradh mo chasan,
poll dubh bog air mo bhotannan
’s mo chanan fhin nam bheul.

ALT

At the Fank
Anne Frater

Standing over by the prairie gate
with clean grass under my wellies,
cold hands in my pockets,
the smell of the sheep dip
faintly
hesitantly
coming to my nostrils
as I watch the others gathered
around the fank
and laughing with each other:
pushing the sheep,
loud voices shouting
and moaning, and laughing
and all with their backs to me
shutting me out.
I stand and watch
and wait for a word
to move me to usefulness.
Moving slowly
gathering the lambs
and driving them before me
in towards the others;
lambs running
to a mother’s bleat.
Drops of water
jump from the sheep dip
like millions of fleas
and the horns’ head-shaking,
wet, cold, fearful
running off.
Another step or two
and I can see the laughing faces.
My own hands holding wool,
the smell of sheep dip on my fingers.
Paint marking my legs,
soft black mud on my wellies
and my own language on my tongue.

ALT

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1y

My grandfather didn’t know he was a Taoist.
He had fished the river Awe for sixty years.
Life is sensed as a flowing movement,
a power like wind or water. When he cast,
it was the bank that moved, not the river…

—Lorn Macintyre, “Satori”
published in The Bridport Prize Anthology 2013 (Redcliffe Press, 2013)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #fishing #naturepoetry #naturewriting #Zen

Satori
Lorn Macintyre

My grandfather didn’t know he was a Taoist.
He had fished the river Awe for sixty years.
Life is sensed as a flowing movement,
a power like wind or water. When he cast,
it was the bank that moved, not the river.
The osprey with the salmon in its talons
needed no metaphor to describe its beauty.
He saw the suchness of the landscape,
the great whole, perfect, sky, mountain,
as in a painting by the Zen K’un-t’an.
There is no Gaelic for the term satori,
the solution lying beyond the intellect,
that flash of delighted intuition, sensing
that a salmon is lying in the current,
while not seeing a ripple with the eye.
If I had told him: ‘you read the river
like a book, noting between the lines
what other fishermen fail to spy,’
he would have clouted me on the head,
the way Zen Masters took the big stick
to pupils who insisted on comparison.
The river needs no language, no homage.
It goes its own way, like the osprey
which will never run out of sky.

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