Family legend has it that my great-great-grandfather built a mill on this wee burn (photo below) at at Dornock, near Gretna, in 1826, then ran off (to England?) leaving my great-great-grandmother with child. The poem is an editor’s choice in the Hammond House ‘Survival’ competition hammondhousepublishing.com
John A – my forebear,
name-giver, border-crosser
and promise-breaker who abandoned
my great-great-grandmother
and the bastard bairn he gave her –
a fellow of craft it seems
more than virtue. In the records he’s
a millwright. What is it about mills
and wanderlust? – I’ll have that
and a few other odds and ends
worth keeping: thrumming wheel-music,
metre in the slap-slap-slap of paddles,
rhythmic and percussive, down and up,
passion in the gush and leap
of water from the millrace. And maybe
satisfaction of a job well done
and a last look-back
to comprehend every part working
as it should. With money sitting snug
and proudly in his pocket. Moving on.
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