Chris, by Tricia Marcella Cimera

Chris

Lewis Grassic Gibbon,
you gave me Scotland,
you gave me Chris Guthrie.
                             
In your books Sunset Song,
Cloud Howe and Gray Granite,
Chris moved through
her world
of wild heather, hard farming,
of Highlands, of men,
of female desire and pain.
She fought for her Self --
first as girl, then a woman --
holding fast to the
disappearing ways of
crofters and land.
                                                           
I loved her so much,
I went to Scotland
again and again.
I rolled Scots words
in my mouth --
wee bairn      aye lass
the kye  and  the queans --
as I hiked by the loch
in mist, heedless of rain,
hearing the quiet voice of
your Chris, speaking
            my name. . .

Tricia Marcella Cimera

Inspired by A Scot’s Quair, a trilogy comprised of Sunset Song, Cloud Howe and Gray Granite by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (pen name of Scottish writer James Leslie Mitchell, 1901-1935), published between 1932-1934.

This poem was first published by Silver Birch Press.

Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern poet with a worldview. Her work appears in many diverse places — from the Buddhist Poetry Review to the Origami Poems Project.  Her poem ‘The Stag’ won first place honours in College of DuPage’s 2017 Writers Read: Emerging Voices contest. She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois, in a town called St. Charles, near a river named Fox, with a Poetry Box in her front yard.