No more NaPoWriMo. Have to make my own poetry prompts. So a poem inspired by one site we visited on Day 2 of our Highlands and Island road trip in Scotland. If you are not familiar with the story of the Highland clearances the Badbea Clearance Village is a stark image of why migration, going away from all they knew was the only option for survival. The landlords wanted good grazing for more profitable sheep. Tenants were shunted off to marginal land. Literally marginal land as Barbea clearly illustrates.
Badbea Clearance Village
Their new place
was made of sandstone and mica chist
Heather and ling, sphagnum moss,
barely a blaeberry.
Gorse, of course.
The sea below offered
herring scholls, gulls eggs
to be picked from cliff nests.
But it was a sheer drop
150 feet or more.
They were made to build
their own boundary wall.
Paid to pen themselves off.
Scoured by North Sea winds
they tethered their beasts
and children, too.
Everything else
had already been snatched away.
They’d been pushed far enough.
Clear off.
Copyright Bee Smith 2019
Took my breath away.
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I was there about 15 years ago, and it is vivid in my mind. My family was one of the “cleared” families; that’s how we got to Eire–The Gunns at least.
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We travelled through Gunn territory yesterday.
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