Some weeks it would shudder, entering their lives
like a sudden snap of Arctic snow
that froze their whole existence,
and they would step out tentatively and go
inch-by-inch upon a layer of frost and ice,
aware if they put a foot wrong
they’d fall foul of the island’s strictures,
their step sliding from under them
so they’d no longer quite belong.
Sometimes, too, they’d make their way
through the rigidity of rainfall,
not lifting heads to recognise the surrounding calls
that on weekdays beckoned them to cliff or crags.
Instead, forced to ignore them, they scurried back
and forth between kirk and home,
drummed into strict procession
by the whip of wind and sermon,
the preacher’s endless, hectoring monotone.
And sometimes, too, it was a blessing.
These hours in kirk a breakaway
from their back-aching labours, all that work
that gained them little riches or reward.
A moment, too, when they could let their guard
down against the threat and risk of death,
the proximity of danger,
and seek the company of angels,
longing for that moment when they’d be swept away
from these shores and be tucked inside Heaven’s filament.