CROWE

With knees around her shoulders

With her toes, she sits and grapples, swaying on the narrow beam.

Planted, waiting.

Over looking undulating acres, growing splendour,

Waiting for the birds.

Her throatal, glottal, croaks and calling.

Watching slowly revolving horizons.

Craggy eyed and hunched all over

Waiting for the ancient coming in the space between barbed wire.

Watch. Wait. (croak). Watch. Wait.

Human only in her form

A magic surrogate to magic.

Ice-blue sky is crawling, swirling in and out, around her beady stare.

In a head of open ramblings

Picture study, dreams apart.

Understanding, under skin,

Building ground-up,

Until the picture forms again.

It is a fruitful plain and plenty.

Only I can see the woman perched astride a hand-hewn fencing.

Lonely on a plain of culture, horti-minded.

Defying snow and wind and nature.

Swaying in hypnotic courting.

Chanting for the coming of the birds.

A penny in her pocket and a gaping hole beneath.

And slowly, legato, her horizons turning.

Beating with an eon heart beat.

Thudding through the wood and bracken.

Thundering in streams and pathways.

Bellowing beneath the cities.

Screaming at the passers by, who stop, shake their heads and move on.

In timeless void she crouches, still.

In soli-solitary.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Old crone. Crow-like.

Waiting.

Black eyes and bundled astride an earth attached stob

She sits and waits.

Blinking.

Kat Robertson 1991

I was looking through a lot of old work and came across this poem from 1991 and thought to try and illustrate it. The Eternity of this figure…

Crone and the ‘Cailleach’ were playing out all around.

Really feeling the passing of the years and questioning the role of the Crone in today’s society.

Drawn to write new myths with her as the central protagonist.

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