Weaver of Time  (for George Mackay Brown (1917-1996))

Weaver of Time, light plays on water,
Rippling, glistening, the wind and the waves.
Weaving with time, smell the salt air.
Hush, hear the rush, feel the wind in your hair.

Sense the thrill, or the chill, of your memories, ecstasies,
Bathe in the pool of the past, back in time.
In younger days, before greys, we would have gone in,
No matter how deep, or how cold, or how grim.

Smile at the memory, cold petty penury,
Shivering children, happy and wet.
Threads of lives, wives, woven in time's loom.
In the womb, mystery;  island tomb, history.

Warp and weft, weaving seconds to hours,
Spinning lives into deaths, meshing myths and mortality.
Honest work, heritage, words, pen and ink.
Voices and pictures indelibly linked.

Deeds and doom fast in the fabric of generations.
Farmers and soldiers, slaved, sweated, and sang.
Fish, wind and rain, blood, seed and pain.
Woman's our seed-jar, crops expected again.