Poems and Pictures

The Bird Psalm

U.A.Fanthorpe

I encountered this little bird when staying in a cottage beside the beach at Rockcliffe in May 2022. A beautiful warm spring afternoon with absolutely no visitors about. Even the icecream van had left. And there was suddenly this – I think- Rock Pippit. Photographing it meant rushing into the house to get the camera and long lens – let those who have experienced understand – getting the settings right, creeping quietly back out, and hoping the bird would still be there … Joy of joys it was – and – the camera settings were correct ..

Evelyn Underhill in her poem ‘Immanence’ writes: ‘I come in the little things’ saith the Lord.

U.A.Fanthorpe says the same thing differently in her poem: The Bird Psalm.

The Swallow said,
He comes like me,
Longed for; unexpectedly.

The superficial eye
Will pass him by,
Said the Wren.

The best singer ever heard,
No one will take much notice,
Said the Blackbird.

The Owl said,
He is who, who is he
Who enters the heart as soft
As my soundless wings, as me.

Poems and Pictures

Up Loch Fyne

By Naomi Mitchison

Naomi Mitchison (nee Halbane) CBE, was born in Edinburgh on 1st November 1897. She was a Scottish novelist and poet and acclaimed as the doyenne of Scottish literature. She died on 11th January 1999. She wrote on a wide range of topics, though only published two collections of poetry and those 50 years apart.

The Japanese artist, Hokusai, referred to in this poem, lived between 1760 and 1849.

Because ‘humped grey fish-watchers’, as they are described by Mitchison in this poem, do not have great photographic appeal, the heron in the photos to accompany this poem takes a different pose.

The humped grey fish-watcher has
become with one wingflap
The elegant trailing heron that
Hokusai dreamed up,
Far from Loch Fyne.
May my own squat and spear-beaked
mind
Fishing and gulping its needs
among weedy statistics
Or in the dazzle of every-day
reflections and refractions,
Sometimes take wing and re-create
a myth.

From ‘The Cleansing of the Knife and other Poems’ (Canongate 1978)

Poems and Pictures

Scurvy Grass

Nicola Morgan

We wondered as to its name:
The rockery-type flower
With fleshy leaves
Carpeting the coastal headland.
Some sort of allysum?

A reference book gives an answer:
‘Cochlearia Officialis’,
Common Scurvy Grass.

Scurvy Grass!
Surely there is a name more befitting
This delicate flower,
With its clusters of white,
And dark spoon-shaped leaves?

The fact is –
Its name reflects
The purpose it served:
To ward off scurvy in days of old.

A member of the
Brassicacea family
– rich in Vitamin C –
Scurvy Grass was
Taken on board ships
In dried bundles
For the long months at sea.
In its distilled form
It was a popular tipple
– Scurvy Grass ale –
Its medicinal properties
Alluded to in the designation
‘Officialis’:
A venerable epithet
To signify its ancient
Pharmaceutical value.

Ah – little white flower
With such medicinal secrets,
Now forgotten to our sophisticated world.
What other healing properties
– unbeknown –
Are being lost in the wisdom of today.