Laurna Robertson

Laurna Robertson, born and brought up in Shetland, a landscape that continues to influence her work, lives in Kelso. Her work has appeared in a range of magazines and anthologies, including the Second Light Anthology My Mother Threw Knives.

Praise Song

For a drowned mountain range surfacing,
scoured by salt winds, bathed in pearl light,
shawled in mist.

For fretted voes and geos; stranded
pillars of rock, hill lochs and peat
banks, sheep on the scattald.

For beaches of shell sand; for wet shingle
that is moorit and shaela. For red
granite cliffs lit by sunset.

For stretches of rust pink Thrift,
Eyebright, Wild Orchis and Lady’s Smock,
honey sweet Clover and Bird’s-foot Trefoil.

For puffins skimming under water; for dark caves
glowing with gannets, their etched eyes watchful;
for sea-gulls oobing before rain.

For cliffs falling sheer to rock pavements,
for seals splashing ashore to nurse pups
whose howls float through the air.

For tarred roofs, tethered cows, netted
hay-ricks, fish drying on gables. For boats
drawn to noosts above tide lines.

For wild reels to fiddle tunes,
the kiss of the wave, the slap of the sea,
for crescendos of wind diminishing.

For islands caught in a time-warp of childhood.
For islands that taught how the world would be.

voes and geos: bays and gullies
scattald: common hill grazing
moorit and shaela: shades of native sheep
oobing: mournful crying