Poets' Blog

Sometimes you can tell there are fish in a deep pool. A shadow moves, light darts, a shape shifts. Sometimes, from stillness, you know nothing lurks. Driving to Loch Awe after dark, around densely forested bends in unfamiliar territory, I sensed a loch behind the trees on our left, and behind identical trees on our right, the steep slope of mountain.

“What sense is that?” number 3 son asked, peering out into the wooded shadows beyond the wedge of headlight, seeing nothing but tree trunks.

I had no idea what sense. Sound? It felt open one side, closed the other. A flat expanse, in that terrain, could only mean water. The sense of a barrier, like a wall on my right, had to be hill. Coming round the next blind bend the left-hand trees thinned to reveal a broad expanse of loch behind. Opposite, the mountain we skirted glowered above the road.

That was Thursday evening. We returned on Sunday. In between we visited Inveraray and Oban, walked around Ardbrecknish, chatted with my birthday son’s friends. Instead of joining the evening parties, I babysat my sleeping grandsons, accompanied by notepad and pen. It was the first uninterrupted quiet time since before Christmas. I wrote one word.

Sometimes, it’s just too late. When my mind drifts, it doesn’t fish for words, phrases, to catch a poem. It searches memory, turning over moments of life shared with my sister. Two wee girls up to mischief. Teenage squabbles. Adult trauma. Closeness and distance. Returning home, the practicalities, things still to be done, leapt into the space that hadn’t, after all, been empty.

This morning, I was wakened by a call from my cousin in New Zealand. It’s almost fifty years since we spoke. He was seven when they emigrated, the contact kept by his mother, my aunt. He had abandoned a difficult email in favour of the human voice and spoken words. I’m amazed, yet again, at the strength of that physical connection we call family, at its survival even when deprived of shared events, involvement, history.

The poem, complete with comment, is due on Friday. Today is Wednesday, and it’s night. I have a title, an idea that might or might not have worked but even though I sense it shifting, I doubt it can be fished out now.

Categories: Janet