Saturday Night, Oxgangs Drive, Edinburgh, Winter 1970

Mum, did they win, or did they lose?
Later that night.
The sound of a taxi coming up the drive,
I am wide awake now,
taxi door slams shut.
Footsteps coming up the stairs.
The key turning in the lock
She goes down.
Shouting, Anger, Tears
Dinner thrown against the wall.
Upstairs I open the window wide.
So wide.
The dark sky fills our room
It is quiet out there.
So quiet.
The broken glass on the street glitters and reflects the stars.
The black winter night sky calls me away.
Over the chip shop,
beyond the street lights,
into the vast darkness,
The anger falls away as I travel out into the night.
Beyond here.

Summer. Edinburgh 1972

Pentlands, Blackford, and Craiglochart Hills and a burn.
These are my places of initiation, my kith.
Where the soil runs deep under my skin,
where I find out who I am.
Wild and free.
Running up the hills and never feeling out of breath.
Climbing trees to see new horizons.
Long summer days of minnow, crab apple, bramble,
sticks and stones, clay straight from the earth
Thunderstorms that crack the air
and the rain comes down in waves.
Clouds skitter and fly across the sky
as we race home across the field

Los Angeles, Califonia, Summer 1988

I go to sleep and dream of rain,
and wake up to another robins egg blue sky.
For months no clouds and no rain.
So I dream,
of rain,
pouring down
all around me,
streaming over my body,
feeling alive,
but wake up here.
How do I get older when nothing ever changes,
too much concrete under my feet.
Longing for rain.
I am married now,
far away from my homeland.
So at night,
in the wee hours,
I dream of dark nights,
and rain that washes me away.

Santa Monica, California, Fall 2004

Late at night buried under the covers
I wake,
I hear it pounding on the roof,
Calling me.
I go to her room and whisper her name.
Come, darling, we have to go.
Her tiny hand in mine.
We run outside,
the rain comes down,
torrential,
we laugh
a wild mother-daughter rain dance, swirling, splashing, and moving to the music only we can hear.

Walpole, Western Australia Summer 2006

I couldn’t protect her
I thought moving to Australia would give her a sense of freedom.
Some new horizons
Would give us time
I couldn’t protect her
Cracked skull
Obliterated eye sockets
I couldn’t protect her
Slowly she recovers
She is strong that way
I am not
I am not the same
Darkness inside and out
So we go to the bush
a place to heal
I burrow deep
I don’t want to wake from my sleep
I feel her
shaking me,
calling my name
Mum, get up!
We have got to go!
I don’t want to move
it is dark inside and out
Mama, get up!
We are rain girls!
Mama, remember! We are rain girls!
so we dance.
A dance of life,
of togetherness.
Spinning together under a Southern sky
washing away the dark.

Isle of Skye, Summer, 2018

We walk hand in hand to the waterfall
The clouds open up, and it pours.
All around from all directions.
They run back to the car
Calling me to follow.
I laugh.
Drenched and soaked to the skin,
Drookit, as my gran would say,
I hold my arms out and turn in the rain.
Joyful and completely alive.
My ancestors’ bones buried
under these hills, forests, and glens
I walk this land in my dreams.

Patricia Hunter McGrath