Today is World Poetry Day so we’ll expecting you to speak in rhyme until bedtime. To mark the occasion we’re featuring a poem from our part of the world. The brilliant Scottish – indeed Fife – poet Kathleen Jamie wrote this when she was expecting her first child and unsure of how she’d feel about the new arrival.

The Tay Moses

What can I fashion for you

but a woven creel of river-

rashes, a golden

oriole’s nest my gift

wrought from the Firth –

 

And choose my tide: either

the flow, when, watertight

you’ll drift to the uplands

my favourite hills, held safe

in eddies where salmon, wisdom

and guts withered in spawn,

rest between moves – that

slither of body as you were born –

or the ebb, when the water

will birl you to snag

on reeds, the river

pilot leaning over the side

‘Name o’ God!‘ and you’ll change hands:

tractor-man, grieve, farm-wife

who takes you into her

competent arms

even as I drive slamming

the car’s gears,

spitting gravel on tracks

down between berry-fields,

engine still racing, the door wide

as I run toward her, crying

LEAVE HIM! Please,

it’s okay, he’s mine.

    [From Jizzen, by Kathleen Jamie, published by Picador in 1999] Moses basket charm above, £24 from True Vintage Jewellery.