Amelia’s Poem

Amelia, your newborn name
Combines with the midwife’s word
And, like smoke from driftwood fires,
Wafts over the lochside road
Past the wattle byre – hay bales
For ponies, Silver and Whisper –
Between drystone walls’ river-
Rounded moss-clad ferny stones,
Through the fenceless gate and gorse
To the flat erratic boulder
Where otters and your mother rest,
Spraints black as your meconium,
Fish bones, fish scales, shitty sequins
Reflecting what light remains.

from The Stairwell (Cape, 2014), Michael Longley 2014, used by permission of the author and the publisher

Michael Longley in the Poetry Store

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