This poem is about the funeral of the mother of one of my very best friends. The funeral was not far from Kyle of Lochalsh on a sun-filled spring day. Everything was as described – even the two sea eagles. Indeed two sea otters playing in the sea the next day didn’t get into the final draft! Donina was just over one hundred. Her clan crest is a cat’s paw but she was a very gentle woman. I felt privileged and moved to be there, and to play the fiddle as the mourners arrived.

I played slow airs as folk stepped into the barn.
I had a seat at the back, not wanting to impose,
And also to gain the warmth of a log-burning stove.
The room settled, I laid down my fiddle, and the minister rose.
In front, your hundred-year body in a coffin dressed in the crest of your clan,
Beyond, framed by a sun-splashed window, Loch Alsh.

The minister spoke of things he must, then paused and said:
‘Time’… ‘time’… ‘time’… ‘time’
He stretched out the word each time to be the thing itself.
He said: ‘what matters is outside time’.
I wondered if he meant kindness, and hope, and love;
All perfectly in time but not part of time.

My eyes rested on people I sat among.
Highland funerals are somber affairs;
Dark ties, and suits, and polished shoes.
But there were also the colours of tartan;
The blackness of deep pools, purple heather and green bracken.
Tweeds were flecked with grass and peat.
In cities we have forgotten how
To dress in the colours of the places where we live.

After, you were carried from the barn
On the shoulders of family,
Your grandson, my godson, played the pipes
As you were laid in your grave
In the garden you loved, beside the man you loved.
Two sea eagles, laying claim to this place, flew above.

Later that evening, the moon rising,
With just close friends and family left,
Before foxes flexed their muscles
I went with some of the younger men
To shovel earth on your coffin
At once covering and revealing your final resting place.
The four shovels had the rhythm of a pipe march
As they laboured in turn.
Time, time, time, time.

The next morning your son and granddaughter
Planted a rose on the newly turned earth.

I was brought up in Largo in Fife. Largo Bay sweeps from Leven to Shell Bay. Largo Bay was the play-place of my youth and I return when I can. On new year’s eve 2023 I woke from a strange dream that was clearly the result of listening to Michael Marra’s ‘Heaven’s Hound’ the night before. The photo below is of me walking to Shell Bay with, for some reason, a shell for a monocle. A shelfie, perhaps.

Last night I dreamt of Heaven’s Hound
Shepherding souls to a heavenly shore.

Hoping to walk off this strangeness,
I laced my boots and pulled on a Guernsey.
I set off into the salty air,
Feeling the sand and stones beneath my feet.

At Johnstone’s Mill four horses galloped from behind my shoulder
Their hooves shook the ground,
For a moment flooding my guts with blood,
Before high-tailing along the water’s edge,
Kicking sand and spraying shards of water,
Refracting light that had travelled through time
To explode here on my most loved bay.

Then out of nowhere that I could see,
A stranger passed and said:
‘This is the most perfect day to end the year’.
I smiled and walked with lighter steps
Until I reached Shell Bay.

This marked my turning point
At this turning of the year.
Setting my face towards Largo
I walked closer to the water’s edge
Where the sound of the waves
Sang a song I had known since
I played on this beach as a child.

Heaven’s Hound did not appear,
But the sea made sense of the coming year.

One of the most noteworthy Native American crow myths is that of the Rainbow Crow. According to this Lenape story, the crow did not always have black feathers or a hoarse cawing voice. Once, the crow was a vibrant bird with feathers in all of the colors of the rainbow. The crow was a beautiful singer and a kind soul. Because the crow was so kind, it risked everything to bring fire down from the heavens to the animals and people who were freezing on earth. In the process, crow inhaled smoke and lost his beautiful voice. The fire was so hot that crow’s feathers turned black as soot. In the end, crow chose selflessness over beauty.

Crow Symbolism & Meaning (+Totem, Spirit & Omens) – World Birds

Sea crows patrol our shores,
Specialists in the tidelines.
Shellfish are dropped from a perfect height
To break their shells but not their salty bodies.
Crows feast by day on sticky flesh
With dismal industry.

But, perhaps, at night crows return
To make from broken shells
Mosaics of an ancient world;
When their feathers were saturated with colour
And their song erupted with primal force,
Erotic and terrifying.