Dawn breaks,
With a fire whipped ocean
And the boatmen’s song.
Voices in waves
Sail the morning winds.
Tumbling from salt spray lips
Rhythm and hymns,
Caught on wings of a guillemot.
In a theatre of fog
Music takes flight,
Rising, like a streak of mist
To face heaven’s door.
And boatmen weep.
Sing goodbye, to the waves,
Lost upon the sorry sea,
As day dies still,
And the boatmen sleep,
And the boatmen sleep.
And we sleep.
©EilidhGClark
“Books open, pens on paper.”
Her voice is fanciful –
Worldly words of wisdom.
Whimsical.
Take a breath Miss Brown.
Over your shoulder, birds trilling
in your ear. Knowledge?
“You understand, You hear?”
“Wings have spanned, grown and flew”.
Miss Brown is telling you.
Over your shoulder in her parchment suit.
Scattered somehow, this puzzle
this test, this class.
Yet sewn together so neatly, so tight,
so fast, that brains leak words inspired.
Alert, not tired Miss Brown.
Spoken proper. Knitted
like a scarf, like the missing words
from a mother passed.
Thank you Miss Brown, Thanks for that.
“That’s all for today.”
An end in sight. Taught by one with
gust and might,
taught by Miss Brown in her parchment suit.
©Eilidh G Clark
This poem is dedicated to one of the most amazing and inspirational people I have had the pleasure of meeting. Madeleine Brown, Stevenson College Edinburgh. Access to Humanities course – English Literature and Communications 2011.
Eilidh G Clark 