This Friday we’re happy to bring you a gentle, compassionate, and hopeful poem from Maggie Mackay. It enters into the thoughts of a woman embarking on a huge change of home – her own great-aunt!
War Bride
I board a steamship wider than the Waverley.
Salty, saltier than the Clyde, the Atlantic is pulling me west.
Gales shower-bathe me, one of three hundred brides this week,
dashing me over swell to Canada, stun me
with the triple mirrors of Northern lights, icebergs and trade winds.
For goodness sake, me, a Scot
in the wake of Vikings, polar explorers and refugees.
Maggie Mackay has a fascination for family history which informs much of her work online and in print, including a poem in the #MeToo anthology and one commended in the Mothers’ Milk Prize, 2017. Her poems have been nominated for The Forward Prize, Best Single Poem in 2017 and 2018 and for the Pushcart Prize last year. Her first pamphlet ‘The Heart of the Run’ will be published later this year by Picaroon.
Celebrating Change 