I pray for linnets and kayaks – a poem by Lydia Harris

I pray for linnets and kayaks 

the names, for the tongue 
that conjures them, I ask for bark cloth 
a traverse board, flexed elm spars 

for my hurts grant  me bog cotton 
like melted snowdrifts, 
make me an overset jar 
with pooled jam at my lip.

Colour me rose madder.
I’ll gazing at the evening
on this quiet shore 
the Hoy hills growing misty.

Lydia Harris lives in the Orkney island of Westray. She held a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award in 2017. Her fourth pamphlet A Small Space is due from Paper Swans this year. Her first full collection, Objects for Private Devotion is due from Pindrop Press in 2022.