Photo by Datingscout on Unsplash
Andrew McNeillie’s New and Collected poems, Striking a Match in a Storm, is published this week by Carcanet. There will be an online launch reading on Wednesday 30th – details here.
Salmon Farm Blues
Call me old-fashioned, as you will, but I prefer the struggle to be uphill running the gauntlet of net and line and on through boulder and bracken under oak and rowan, towards the pool with its whorls and frothy scribbles and near Bible-paper midge-shadows, to watch and wait, until I am there as if not there and what was disturbed, as I leapt and plunged, settles again. The dipper dings his anvil. The wren proclaims his kingdom. The blackbird skulks towards evening, listening for his inaudible cue to sing. Call it God’s chorus if you want to. And what I brought from the head-banging Atlantic, rushes away to oblivion; with rain-trace from moor and mountain – crystal-pure, peat-based, distillation filtered at threshold and hearthstone, beginning to wash through my gills. What do they say? Live well and die where you were born. Not an option for so many nowadays, enslaved on the plantations as they are.