FIFEBOOKFEST  POETRY  COMPETITION

WINNERS

FIRST PRIZE       £100.00 Lindsay MacGregor - Lunardi
SECOND PRIZE  £50.00  Myra Pater - The Lifeboat Man
THIRD PRIZE       £25.00  Andrew Mc Neil - Whose Voice?

Runners up - Maureen Sangster -  Water Horse

Lindsay MacGregor -Transition Town

Myra Pater - The Traveller's Cross

Myra Pater - The Garden of Infinite Possibilities

Graham King - Dr Pangloss Revisited- or - Outlook Sunny

Katrina Finnon - Dad

Susan Omand - Questions, Questions...

Margaret Tollick - Celebrating the Completion of the Building of The Forth Rail Bridge

Whose Voice?

The sea relents
Gives us time to edge beyond the solid
Move beyond the sense of our retinas
The move of our skin.
Here inside the wrecked cylinder
A ships oil tank on Ainster’s skerries
The spring tide has left its dripping kiss
Years ago filleted from metal and plate
The seaweed hangs and glistens in stolen light.
A rock pool is lipping the entrance to this world
Where falling and falling sound nourish
Soft air aching for the return of a tide
Silent tongues keep speaking to me
Knowing their salt silence will keep
Part of you there eternally.

Andrew Mc Neil

The Lifeboatman

He sits half-propped, by the window
watching the hull which lies upturned
under the ancient rowan tree.
He is unable to cut either,
by superstition or perhaps frailty.
The planks are sprung, keel buckled and torn,
ribs bleached like the bones of drowned men.
Twists of varnished curls rustle below
Like autumn leaves.

On long evenings, he says he can hear
the hissing foam
In the shush, shush of swishing rees,
feel salt upon his face, warmth in his bones.
But when winter's night falls,
hurricane lamp flickering feebly,
he knows only flaring pain,
an ache in every fibre,
the agony of calloused, rope-burnt hands
stretched out.

Two saviours
waiting for the final call.

Myra Pater

Lunardi

A Tailor baling cloth at Teuchats swore
blind he’d seen a sneak thief near Baltilly with a tup.

The Molecatcher and Ropemaker from Sodom and Gomorrah
told the congregation of an angel over Cassindilly way.

A Saddler from Laddedie gouged tally marks
and secret signs on fabled elms at Edenwood that day.

A Millwright netting butterflies on Magus Muir was sure
he heard diurnal owls hooting at the moon.

The Midwife and a Sick-Nurse, bunking up at Barbarafield, caught
the stench of burning flesh from Struthers Barns.

A Milliner from Kinninmonth told anyone who’d listen
of the sighing of a dying man somewhere west of Bandirran.

A Vintner and the Weavers’ Agent, both at Gathercauld, could not
recall exactly what they saw by Teasses Mill.

A Flaxman from Tarvit Farm would later boast
a thousand fireflies flitting up the Findas road in broad daylight.

The daughter of the slaughterman, guddling in the Ceres Burn,
foretold the fall of Icarus at a milestone near Callange.

Lindsay MacGregor