Hale watter runklin doon the lane,

stair roddies stottin aff the tar,

branders hotterin, bubblin foo,

an ma soakit feet rinnin, rinnin tae get hame.

The roadie’s dryin, risin steam.

Blin storm gies wye tae a singin singin sky.

A splashin splooterin draas ma een –

starlins haein a dook in a reemin watter spoot.

  Shoo’er by Gráinne Smith – written when Trix my dog and I got caught in a thunderstorm, thoroughly soaked…and by the time we reached home, just 15 minutes later, the sky had cleared.  At least the starling enjoyed the sudden downpour and their resulting bath in the rone pipe!  (And I’ve enjoyed having the poem published, and being asked to perform it many times…)

Wonderful last October to be asked to read some of my Doric stories and poems, including Shoo’er, at the Cookney concert, part of the TMSA Doric Festival…and this year I’ll be taking part again, this time at the ‘Mearns Hairst’ on Friday 28th Sept at the Grassic Gibbon Centre, Arbuthnott, along with songs and music from Geordie Murison, Anne Nicol, Jim and Kate Taylor.  Also really looking forward to being part of the audience at this year’s Cookney event, along with my French friends William and Jeth..

Then next Sunday, 30th Sept, looking forward to being part of ‘Poetry n Motion’ at Aberdeen Lemon Tree, along with other members of Lemon Tree Writers, Blue Salt Collective, City Moves Dance Agency, Morag Skene and Tom Dailly, Colin Edwards.  Just one of of the poems I’ll be reading that night (hard to imagine it was only a year since that great trip to Canada)

Fall – Sept 2011, Canada and Scotland

Red orange yellow flights,

leaves driven by the rough wind

lifting over armies of trees

reflected in the lake, landing

to meet and greet beavers

on deep paths leading

to the long dark

days ahead.

Quiet now the leaves lie

cold, a white-frosted

carpet on hard earth,

ready for the shining snowdrifts

later winds will bring, new falls

deep in woodland tangled with giant

branches and roots where

chipmunks, squirrels sleep,

deer hide, until signposts

appear signalling

Spring again.

I am home and clocks have changed.

not long now, then we can feed, rest, sleep.

Flying high in ever-changing lines against a lucid sky,

the geese tell winter’s here, winter’s here. keep going.

Still they arrive in straggled vees, another and another,

choosing to share our northern lot of short days, winds

driving rain, bright snow, cold. keep going

these seasoned travellers cry,

look ever onwards, to spring and growing days.

Again, again, the geese tell Winter’s here, Winter’s here.

Keep going.

Gráinne Smith

Also currently working hard on different side of my writing, ‘Teamwork in Tough Times: Families and Working Together Care’, (working title) my new non-fiction book for Routledge…chapters all written in draft now, still a few interviews to complete with family members in various different difficult circumstances who are currently supporting a vulnerable loved one… Fingers crossed that I keep to plan and meet the deadlines I have!

So very important that I too, just like the geese now arriving again in north Scotland, keep going, keep going…