Meditation For My Cousin Deceased May 1st Poem by Sally Evans

The garden climbs the slope behind.
The public street winds through the strath
With cars and coaches past the door.
The building's cool and wide.

I sleep the private side of it,
Wake to the rising summer sun
Across the forest slopes, hear owls
And birds and chickens. Sometimes, when
I give my room to visitors, I sleep
Close to the road, where night traffic
Is infrequent, speeding to Oban
Or further north or south.

Oban is west. I like to think of Oban,
Its sunsets and its lazy quays,
Boat trips to watch the seals. First, here, see
Pine martens, squirrels, otters, deer
(Far fewer since the army shot our local herd
That was marauding gardens and small trees
- What else had they done to incur
The might of army guns?) Nature
Is appeased and applauded
While drivers rest from traffic
And come through the long ground floor
Of our book room, bypassing the books
To see the chickens, bees, the blue poppies -
They are here from the towns, from the cities,
From England, Yorkshire, Devon, Wales.

They make planned escapes from their lives.
I do not escape mine,
Except for a little time, a day or two
To find the same people as before, the writers
Who know what sort of fool I am,
Or brothers and sisters who cannot remember
Life without my questionable input -
Wherever I go, I find
Corners of my own life, nobody else's.
This must be part of mine,
This highland borderline village time,
Its books and garden and blue poppies
And writing poems as I think fit -
Not as the tutors of emerging poets
Necessarily think fit, not as
The government necessarily thinks fit,

But my own response, my own barrage
Against insanity, my own sandbags
To stem downpourings of despair,
Electric storms of impulse, necessity,
As when my cousin aged 77
Saw fit to end his life and his wife's life
And their pet dog's life. There didn't have
To be a reason though there could have been,
A storm at the end of a very long life.

The longest ago I remember, he was there,
Learning to mend motors and run businesses,
Complying in building home and family,
Wily and wise, constant and able.
All lives end in catastrophe.
Sometimes catastrophe seems quite near
And troubles with its presence while never happening,
Sometimes it is sudden and unseen,
Sometimes unfathomable. Life.
Mine would have been a catastrophe many times
If I hadn't been able to write of it,
In it, around it, alongside it
To take my mind off the facts by stating them.
So up yours, the writing establishment,
Up yours, poncy chancers of the literary industry,
Up yours, Arts Council and Creative Scotland, and speaking
for many more who are better and cleverer than me,
I do this thing not according to your rules
But for my own survival.
World, I have escaped.

I have escaped the things I love and I do not love,
The people I love and hope too much from,
Plants and trees to impose my will on
Which will all return to their own ways in due course,
The books that crowded me, those that needed answers,
Those that goaded, delighted or even bored.
I have escaped into the way of sentences,
Juxtapositions of friendly words,
Such as, kept to myself or divulged to everyone,
Have always been my first and last friends.
Words. Them too, in the personal yet cosmic catastrophe
I will one day leave behind.