some poems…

From Gods and Monsters - Publ Macmillan UK. Illustration credit Chris Riddell

December 2023

Pub - Town is the Garden chapbooks - 2021

From - Speaking Back - poetry anthology pub 2023 - Lumphanan Press

Edited by Dawn Mclachlan

Catching Time, by Dawn Mclachlan

My hands caught time without me realising
The years crept across them leaving freckled footprints
brown pressed on paper-thin
tissue-like, drawn tight
Decades pasted upon knuckle bones
The lines of palm that in my youth
were sharp, and deep
and spoke of truth
of future hopes and things to come
now speak more of years long gone
A craquelure of wet
and cold
and faster years
and growing old
When I was small and pink of fist
with life to come and nothing missed
my grandmother’s stern hands reigned
Oven-red, bleach-sore
sausage-fingered, berry-stained
white and sweet with flour and sugar
rose-scratched, earthy raw
steadying and strong
At her bedside as the lights of her life dimmed
I saw the tissue of her skin
thin-laced over knotted bones
pulse stutter
Her grip a mere moth-like flutter
I laid my hands over hers as she neared a century old
and wondered if she’d felt the years unfold
if she, in her time, had also thought
of all the years her hands had caught
and if she had mused on how much they
had accidentally let slip away.

Winner of the Brian Nisbet Poetry Award - 2019

REVERIE by Dawn Mclachlan

My grandfather told me of a forest
three days into the desert
reached by long march
and cold nights under an ice moon
with the endless sky of a billion stars
Restless and sleepless under dusty canvas
with drifting lilt of desert song
and bone-snap of a dying fire
he dreamt of home
Each morning they marched towards the distant shifting horizon
until the sun burnt air and lungs
Boots filled with hot sand and heavy pack pulling down
he marched on
leading until, in twilight, it rose from the sand
blackened ghosts of trees
claw-like branches scratching the blue belly of the approaching night
polished by wind and time
shining as glass
A petrified forest
casting lean moon-shadows against the rippled sand
a memory of life
a reminder of death
They marched on through
unsheltered by these parodies of trees
My grandfather broke step
to pluck a splintered fragment from the sand
Forty years later I sat
with a glassy fossil in my tiny hand
feeling it grow hot
a vision in my mind’s eye of his past
and of one much greater
I hung on every word
seeing as clearly as if I had walked in his sand-filled boots
listening and dreaming
as my grandfather told me of a forest

Winner of the Brian Nisbet Poetry Award - 2020