Woman In The Wind Poem by John Beaton

Sheets of rusted corrugated iron
clatter in the gusts against its walls—
the black house mossed with memories of childhood.
It passed like sunset blushed across the kyles.
A teenage bride, she wed her next-door neighbour;
one gateway and she crossed her line of blood.
Today that field-gate lies unhinged and fallen,
half-sunk in a half a lifetime's puddled mud
and only washing-line connects the gate-posts.
Three shirts with arms extended tug and flap—
a man, two boys. She sees three crucifixions
and thinks on all the prayers and benedictions
they've counted on to save them from mishap.

Their row-boat rounds the Cregan to the Sound
of Raasay out of Camustianavaig Bay.
Black cormorants, like mourners, watch them pass
behind Ben Tianavaig then fade away.
At tide-change there's a hush as waters still.
Red cod in congregations prey and gulp
the eels that undulate like blowing rags
as hand-lines search their sanctuaries of kelp.
Clouds glisten, haloed by a hidden sun.
The brightness weakens to the creak of oars.
Then wingless shadows fly across the heather,
gray waves of swelling rain bring foul weather
as storms begin to sweep the open moors.

This morning and each morning since she married
she's borne the water-buckets from the burn
to wash away the woad of savage living
expecting neither respite nor return.
From unrelenting slime and sweat and smearings,
she keeps the gate and dares the coming squall,
extracts the wind's last spit-less drying breath;
but now both rain and iron rattle the wall.
In headscarf, tallowed boots, and threadbare coat
she wears for milking and when going for peat
she pulls the clothes-pegs, hoping that it brightens;
instead the cowl of gloom draws in and tightens,
and rainspots on the clothes seal her defeat.

Now serried whitecaps charge the assembled leagues
of shoreline cliffs, then crash like cracks of doomsday
and rise as giant clamshells on the rocks;
though bow to blow, four oars can make no headway.
They slash their grounded lines and blisters tear
from callused hands as limbs and torsos, wood—
one streaming sinewed beast impelled by fear—
resist the pounded Cregan's beatitude.
No bell, just stony silence from the kirk
where ministers tell all they're unforgiven
until they die, then say they've gone to Heaven—
cold comfort as the combers go berserk.

She steps inside and fights to shut the door.
Outside the ravens huddle under haystacks,
and seagulls switchback into battering gales.
The iron sheeting flies. She finds some sacks
and caulks the draughty door, then lifts the wash
and squeezes hard to feel if it's still moist
with water hauled before her men-folk rose;
then clasps these family icons to her breast,
damp armfuls of limp, empty cloth, and knows,
as surely as the sun will set forever
beyond the kyles, as surely as the kirk
will keep its foregone verdicts under cover,
that, whether she must face a widow's grief,
or they return, expecting her relief,
until she dies, one of two Hells awaits her.