Poem

• Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic / very loud and very fast
• I could not answer her - / I could not understand her.
• She wore men's boots / when she wore any.
• -I can see her strong foot, / stained with peat,
• paddling with the treadle of the spinningwheel / while her right hand drew yarn / marvellously out of the air.
• Hers was the only house / where I've lain at night / in the absolute darkness / of a box bed, listening to / crickets being friendly.
• She was buckets / and water flouncing into them.
• She was winds pouring wetly / round house-ends.
• She was brown eggs, black skirts / and a keeper of threepenny bits / in a teapot.
• Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic / very loud and very fast.
• By the time I had learned / a little, she lay / silenced in the absolute black / of a sandy grave / at Luskentyre.
• But I hear her still, welcoming me / with a seagull's voice
• across a hundred yards of peatscrapes and lazybeds / and getting angry, getting angry / with so many questions / unanswered.