On the Firth of Clyde – a poem by Karen McAferty Morris

On the Firth of Clyde

She sat down beside me on the bench
outside the big Texas hospital, both of us
waiting for the valet to bring our cars.
She also seemed in no hurry,
glad to be out in the mild March wind again.

Your perfume smells wonderful, I remarked
impulsively, a luscious aroma drifting my way.

White Linen, she said, turning toward me,
pleased. A gift from my family. They saved up for it.
She grimaced, it’s expensive.

Is that a Scottish accent I hear?

She nodded, eyes sparkling, and as some strangers
will do, she told me her story.
A husband four years buried, a move here
decades ago from Dumbarton, a town
on the Firth of Clyde.
Glasgow’s River Clyde flows
toward the Atlantic and the Irish Sea,
blooms into this estuary five hundred feet deep
surrounded by peninsulas and splotched
with skerries and islands.

Scotland’s freezing, I said. I’ve been there.

She laughed, showing misaligned teeth.
True, but one summer, oh a dozen years ago now,
we returned to celebrate our anniversary
and we danced at night on the banks of the firth.

She hadn’t seemed a white linen lady,
just an ordinary woman with mirthful eyes.
Yet in those few minutes, she offered me
a scene in a life surrounded by love,
that I recall now and then when I most need to.

A sky lumpy with gray clouds, the cold wind snapping,
daughters, brothers, nieces, bonny friends,
the day darkens to purple heather,
the shingled beach crunches under their feet,
they hold each other, the water laps, they dance.

 

Karen McAferty Morris writes about nature and ordinary people. Her poetry, recognized for its “appeal to the senses, the intellect, and the imagination,” has appeared in Persimmon Tree, Sisyphus, The Louisville Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Black Fox Literary Journal, and Lyric Magazine. Her collections Elemental (2018), Confluence (2020), and Significance (2022) are national prize winners. She is lucky enough to live on Perdido Bay in the Florida panhandle.