Poetry Review: Writing Ground

This poem by Vivien Jones features in Writing Ground, a pamphlet put together by four women writers for the Dumfries and Galloway Wildlife festival earlier this year, exploring places which have a lot of meaning for them. This is about Crichope Linn, where the intrusion of litter into the natural scene seems all the more shameful because of the powerlessness of the lovely nymph, the mythical guardian of the waterfall, to protect her environment.

She is white, wet, naked,

beautiful as needs be,

in the deep shadows of

Crichope’s ravine, she slides

in and out of vision.

Movement so fleeting

it might be a reed rustling,

her river-weed hair floats

among leaf-fall and bubbles,

she waits as she always has,

keeper of the running water.

But Naiads and rivers change little,

scooped out rock, pebble swirled,

swollen from winter rainstorms,

all there is to show for great age.

She knows every course it may take,

every pool that overflows to thin rivulets,

over ferns and moss, every new flow.

Her winter garden is decorated with

bright wrappings of crisp packets,

aluminium keys gleaming among ferns.

She must always make the best of it.

You can read Writing Ground at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Canongate, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. tel: [phone], e-mail [email protected] or see www.spl.org.uk. To buy the pamphlet from Vivien Jones contact the SPL.