Live Encounters Poetry & Writing August 2024
The Land o’ The Cat, poems by Mandy Beattie
A Ghazal for Caithness: The Land o’ The Cat
The Land o’ The Cat scaled Scaraben’s
clavicle when the ice came midwinter
Mute swan over hummocks and water hollows
a plaid ribbon never tame midwinter
The twin greylag geese of Camster Cairns
their drystane dyke lichen a vine and ivy
on standing stones and scrambled yolk
of marsh marigold aflame midwinter
Pirns of thread in ground-gansey’s string sedge
among kelpies in lochans and Wee Folk
on Faeries Hill playing Cat’s Cradle
under herring bone sky’s hame midwinter
Mizzenmast in smoor-mist and whirling dervish
winds on Drove roads and Clearance crofts:
Stone aikles in salty tears in the shebang
of sphagnum not to blame midwinter
But the Selkie of St Trothan sees not black
crowberry and black bog-rushes only sundew
and dragonfly under North Star’s amber musk
In the Land o’ The Cat dame is midwinter
even after duck-egg blue ceiling on daffodils
and yellow on the broom. Aurora Borealis
over rowan, stone barley and sporran
of heather after Muirburn’s game midwinter
Returning to Heavenly Dancers ashes will fly
with hen harrier and merlin birthing
into the next cleat of peat; pearl inside
a seed pod of wame’s midwinter
Blue-Moon Fore-Telling
Angelica withdrew; drifted
into other-worldly third eye, portent-flames
and augur-dreams with angels, ravens and one magpie kneeling
on stirrups of kin-branches under worm moons. Knew sure
as breaking eggs under a waning gibbous moon
when her granddaddy clawed his last wheeze —
A sibling named her witch. Hissed
That’s not true. That’s not true. You’re wicked
Her mama thought devils danced among those visions
in kindling, coal lumps and peat — So, Angelica went incognito
deep undercover; kept hag-stone and crystal ball kennings, comings
and goings, close as a mute-muff under waxing crescent moon’s
waxwing and yew. Overseas she keened; kenned
her brother’s heart murmur slipped beneath full moon’s
waves. Killed time
like last quarter moon’s top-heavy bough waiting for telegram’s
ebony armband.
Her mama’s mama another oracle interred deep
as wild fig tree roots; not broiled in tar like the Brahan Seer
or Janet Horne and her ilk stake-burnt, or dunked in tipsy chairs
for soothsaying of new moon’s umbilical arrivings
gatherings and harvest moon leavings. Those
God-gifts endowed through daughters with their royal toe
longer than the hallux — Aurora a fey mystic too
Yet, their Clan were no hung jury
but Kangaroo Court
© Mandy Beattie
Mandy Beattie’s poetry appears in, Poets Republic, Drawn to The Light, Lothlorien, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Visual Verse, WordPeace, Wildfire Words, Spilling Cocoa, Last Stanza, Poetry Super Highway, Crowstep, Spoonie, The Pen Points North, Full House Literary, Verse-Virtual, 5 Words, Abridged, Big Girl’s Village Lockdown Showcase, House of Commons, Resilience Frontiers Films, anthologies and many more. Winner of Words with Seagulls and City of Poets Competitions. Poets Choice, Marble Poetry. Shortlisted, 10th International Five Words Competition; Creative Future Writer’s Award and Black Box Competition. Best of The Net Nominee, 2024. Short story in, Howl New Irish Writing. Forthcoming poetry publications in, Dreich, Lunares Zine, Coin-Operated Press, Orphic Review and Federation of Writers Scotland Anthology.