Four Callander Poems & A Highland Games Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.Chanticleer’s Comb

Chanticleer’s comb is fiery red
Sixteen wives he takes to bed
Sixteen wives, each one with egg
Chanticleer is a small sperm keg

2.High Summer

A lolloping dog, all flappy ears and tail
Zigzags its bounding way through ferns and leaves
The sleepy river slides its glassy way
Under the emerald canopy of trees

The clouds, like tumbleweed, roll overhead
The sunbeams weave their dimpling interplay
Of leaf and light a woodland Jacob’s coat
High summer. Time of warmth and turning hay

3.Highland Games

A tented city: dancers changing
From over the globe, spectators ranging
Round the park where strongmen flex
Muscles and caber-flinging pecs,
Kilts and quaichs and bungee jumps
Dancers knotting their Highland pumps.
Pipers piping. Chief’s Glengarry
Calum, Alasdair, Shannon, Mhairi
Gordon Highlanders, puppet play
Seagulls snatching the scraps away
Climbing walls and Scotty dogs
Sculptor carving out totem logs
Cheerleaders and tug of war
Waltzers, burgers, wheeling car
Showers of rain. A trampoline
Balloons and sporrans, chips, ice cream
Drummers marching trampled grass
Birds of prey where the punters pass
Tattoos, face paints, a police pipe band
Wheelie bins with debris crammed
Bouncy castles, pick’n’mix
Stiltwalkers with legs of sticks
Mediaeval stocks and mace
Buggies, whisky, the children’s race
Cameras clicking, ceilidh song
Giggling schoolgirls from old Hong Kong
Queues for venison in a bun
Highland games are a load o fun!

4.Sally’s Pool

Bee on a buttercup’s busy as a monkey
Picking fleas from a sibling monkey’s back
Little dappled pool, so sun-blink lively
Flap-jack frogs go fumbling over your reeds
All fingers and thumbs. A tiny jade green beetle
Abseils down a leaf where a bummer hums
Swallows spill from their ivied nests above
Like beakers overfilled with a tide of wings
Moments like these are rare as nectar-crumbs

5.Letter to Port & Starboard

Port & Starboard are two Wellsummer hens, living in hen paradise with Ian King and Sally Evans. Their hen-clan features on Kellog’s cornflake boxes.

Dear Port & Starboard,

Please accept my thanks for your excellent gift today.
I think you swallowed the sun.
Your eggs melted on my mouth like a warm kiss
The packaging was particularly fine,
Burnt sienna flecked with caramel freckles

How delicately you strut, how most precisely
Hoisting each yellow foot like a well-oiled crane
Gingerly placing it down as if walking on eggshells

You burble together like two slow boiling kettles
Your terracotta combs all red and jiggling
Your eyes like pressed studs in a provost’s shirt
May you lay long and prosper, feathery virgins!