Tessie's Talk

She called our county drain The Burn

when I was wee and she was worn.

At the field's edge she built a cairn:

"Rags on a scarecrow ward the corn."

While darning socks with worsted yearne

or milching coos in a hip-roofed barn

she sang Burns to a jug-earned bairn.

A ferlie whirled in her butter churn.

Tessie's Time

She said the sundial stood so long

because it only counted hours

   when the sun was shining.

Its daily lesson kept her strong,

showing her how to husband powers

   despite their slow declining.

When the years totaled ninety-one

   she was thirty-nine by the sun.

Timothy Murphy

From Very Far North, The Waywiser Press,
London, England, © 2002.  Reprinted by
permission of the author.

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