These are the winning entries in the recent May Fest poetry and prose competition held at the Lairg Learning Centre. There were over 30 entries and all of very high standard.
The entry from Katie Turney, Bonar Bridge, the Poetry winner:
The Silver Birch Tree
I saw you there
Resting, peacefully
In deep thought
By the flowing stream
The summer sun fell
On your warm shiny leaves
In silent shallows
I could almost feel you
Watching over me
You crossed my mind
Strongly reserved
I started to breathe with you
Very tall you stood
Prim and proper
Isolated
With a twisted struggle
Curved like a silvery umbrella
Hook opening
Untangled you hang free
With your droopy dreamy leaves
The entry from Susan Bewley, Kinlochbervie, Poetry runner-up:
Frog Spawn
Just over the brow of the hill
where no one chooses to go
in a bend of the burn
in a bracken dip a pond-
thick-iced in winter
mossed and rushed in spring
home to a teeming glob of frog spawn-
a great glassy circle of life
waiting for sun and rain
to activate little black tails and legs.
Chance might bring moist winds
to nurture-
might bring hot sun or greedy birds
to blot before beginning.
A circle of chance-
an imponderable dance
we all join in.
The entry from Mary Black, Lairg, Creative Writing winner:
Leaving
Just over the brow of the hill smoke wended gently upward. He was at home then. That smoke was a comfort to me just as the faint glow in the sky at night soothed me with the knowledge of his presence.
He didn’t know how I felt. Didn’t know I spent my days and nights dreaming. I held his name in my heart. Would he come by? It was sweet torture when he did as I waited to be noticed- or not. Why was it that some days he would bless me with the sunniest smile and at other times I was invisible to him?
I knew the sound of his truck like my own heartbeat and ran into the house to check my reflection in the spotty old mirror.
He and father were talking in the yard. I needed an excuse to go out there. I couldn’t just stand and gawk. I grabbed the egg basket although I’d already collected some this morning. His nephew was with him. A young lad, keen as mustard about every aspect of farming. Rory was the boy’s name. He offered to help me gather eggs. I nodded. I could do no other. Adam wasn’t about to offer help. He and father smiled benignly on us youngsters. Rory dropped the bombshell. His face alight with excitement. “Adam’s going to New Zealand to work on a big sheep farm.” He said, each word a poison dart. “And I’m taking over the croft. It’ll be a start for me.” He looked as if he would like to say more but was afraid. “Well now that’ll be just grand for you.” I managed to say. Rory more than liked me. That was obvious. I looked at his honest attractive face and thought ‘why can’t it be you? It should be someone like you.’
Adam and Rory stayed for the mid-day meal. Father was scowling a bit and Adam kept grinning at me across the table. I knew I couldn’t contain my distress for much longer but couldn’t think of a reason strong enough to abandon our guests. I was so concerned with my own sorrow that it took a while for me to notice the tears in mother’s eyes. What a selfish besom I was. Watching Dad’s frown and Mum’s tears, I realised that something awful must have happened and it couldn’t be Adam’s leaving. I was the only one who cared about that.
Father lent back in his chair and went through the ritual of packing his pipe with Walnut Brown. He sucked and puffed until it was drawing to his satisfaction. We all watched the performance, knowing there was no point in trying to hurry him. When the pipe was securely resting in the dent in his lip it had created over the years, Father began to speak. “Annie lass we are about to have a conversation on a subject I hadn’t thought to be discussing for many years yet and I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. Indeed I don’t think we should be talking about it at all but your mother and this rapscallion of a traitor says it’s my duty to tell you the facts. Adam here is going off across to the very opposite side of the world as far away from family as a man can get. Do you credit it?” I nodded, unable to speak. “But that’s no the worst of it, no. He wants to take our bairn with him.” What did he mean by our bairn? I was an only child. Could he mean me? Adam jumped up and came round the table. He knelt beside my chair not like a suitor but to be nearer my level. He took my hands and that was quite lover like. He said “Your father made me promise not to speak to you until next year but things have changed now that I’ve been offered this fine manager job. I’ll be leaving in three months and I’m hoping you’ll come with me. I’ve seen it in your face and heard it in your voice and I know you have some feelings for me as I have for you but your father thinks you’re too young yet.” “Oh! She’ll not want to go away so far from her parents.” Father interrupted. Adam ignored him. “I know I haven’t courted you as you deserve but I promised to make it up to you and I’ve brought you this. It’s yours whether you marry me or not.” He handed me a pretty ring with an emerald and two little diamonds in it. I looked at my parents. Mother looked dreadfully sad but resigned. Father still looked angry. I had yearned for Adam’s love and now it was declared but to have him I would have to lose my family. Oh I would go with him. I couldn’t not but looking at Father I saw when the realisation hit him. Next to him Rory sat stony faced. Oh why was life so difficult? I handed the ring to Adam. His face was pale and questioning.
“You put it on me.” I said and he lit up like a beacon.
Entry from Barbara Watson, Lairg, the Creative Writing runner-up:
Family History
“Just over the brow of the hill” is one of our family sayings that celebrate my mother’s lovable quirkiness and aptitude for mishaps. I think all families have a collection of comic incidents shared and seeming catastrophes avoided. Other favourites that poke gentle fun at her failures include “Who couldn’t find the elephant at Edinburgh Zoo?”, “Who sat down in an icy burn at Glenmore?”, “Who took the Blue out of Grotto by wearing her polaroids?”.
“Just over the brow of the hill” originated the year Father got stuck in Budapest in April because of mayhem in European airspace, probably French traffic controllers but perhaps unseasonal weather: who knows. It was Easter week and our plans for a holiday seemed to be evaporating when Mother, ever keen to re-live that nostalgic moment, decided to take us all to the seat of her childhood magic – Glen Esk. She scurried through pages of advertisements with the tenacity of a hunting stoat and announced in tones of triumph that the very cottage she had holidayed in was still for let. “What did we think of that?” Silence. I and my siblings, Celia, Val and Barrie, felt that a cottage which had housed happy family holidays in the 30s might be a touch decayed, a touch primitive perhaps. Mother laughed at our fears “You’ll have a wonderful time exploring the river. And I know just the place to roll our Easter eggs. We used to go up the grassy hill opposite the house and compete in rolling the eggs up and over the top”
Good Friday saw us clustered at the path leading up to a small stone cottage with daffodil packed garden and whispering pines leaning over the back wall. It looked ancient but was a delight inside with glass cabinets full of things dear to the Victorian collector – bottled snakes, birds eggs, pinned butterflies – and the odd shaped little bedrooms just under the eaves seemed to be waiting for Goldilocks. I snuggled under my patchwork quilt that night and really began to believe that fun lay ahead. But I woke to sounds of dripping from the pines, now dank and dispirited, and trailed down to the kitchen to view snap, crackle and pop being ladled into three gloomy faces. “We’ll paint the eggs first and then it’ll be fine enough to walk round the loch.” We were not entirely convinced by Mother’s determination for enjoyment but she was proved right and, despite dizzy Val’s efforts to lose the latest red beret at the point where we watched the ducks, we had a thoroughly satisfying day capped by a feast conjured up on an ancient stove.
Easter Day was sunny, as it should be, and we attended the early service at the Parish Church followed by Easter breakfast. I still have a memento in the form of a faded paper napkin with cheeping chickens emerging from eggs. Celia, the eldest and organiser, got into action packing our haversacks with sandwiches, sausage rolls, buns and, of course, the eggs. Off we set up the hill which was steeper than it looked and we were soon strung out up the slope. Suddenly there were wails from behind. Barry, in impatience, had rolled his egg and it had disappeared. We rushed back to search but no egg was to be seen. Perhaps it had taken a snoozing rabbit by surprise but we shall never know. We resumed our upward toil followed by a sullen little figure – even his yellow sunhat seemed to droop.
At last we were near the top. “Now!” said Mother breathlessly and we all hurled our eggs towards the top. I remember thinking how oddly they seemed to take a life of their own leap up in the air and then plummet downwards. We rushed up to see whose egg had won. “Stop! Stop!” Mother was screaming. We obeyed the panic in her voice and stopped. Just over the brow of the hill an enormous quarry had been dug out and far below was a still, dark pool which had no doubt swallowed our gaily painted eggs. In the stunned silence Mother spoke, “We’ll just picnic down there by the trees. Who’s for orangeade?” We trooped down, scooping up Barry who had never reached the top but was cheering up since he didn’t now have to watch us all peel our eggs.
From that day the repetition of “Just over the brow of the hill” would bring to mind one of Mother’s less successful schemes, although she never laughed as we did. In fact a flicker of a faraway look would pass over her face as if she could see in her mind’s eye more than eggs hurtling over the quarry’s lip and into the deep, dark water below.
